Last weekend Russians went to voting booths to elect members of the State Duma, the lower house of their nation’s legislature. To no one’s surprise President Vladimir Putin’s governing party, United Russia, appears once again to have won a landslide victory.

Of course, that victory is a lot easier if the election process is compromised.

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U.S. Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md.), who chairs the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (also known as the Helsinki Commission), said, “From barring opposition candidates to stuffing ballot boxes and manipulating vote totals, there is ample evidence that these parliamentary elections may be the most blatantly fraudulent of them all. The Kremlin once again has demonstrated its utter disregard for the norms and values it purports to respect.”

But Russian authorities were apparently not content simply to ensure a victory. Reports emerged just before voting began that they had actually bullied America-based tech giants into de-platforming a well-known, jailed opposition leader — Aleksei A. Navalny.

Apple and Google, the uncontested titans of the mobile app world, both removed an app called “Smart Voting” from their ubiquitous app stores. The app — a project of Navalny and his allies — was meant to be a tool to organize opponents to the status quo rule of Putin’s party. Google Docs also blocked access to sheets listing “Smart Voting”-endorsed candidates and Google’s YouTube halted related videos.

Colleagues of Navalny attacked this move that knee-capped them just as polls opened. The Associated Press reported that one Navalny strategist, Leonid Volkov, said the tech giants “bent to the Kremlin’s blackmail.”

Another ally, Ivan Zhdanov, tweeted that the takedown was “a shameful act of political censorship” He also mocked it by writing: “Expectations: the government turns off the internet. Reality: the internet, in fear, turns itself off.”

Russian regulators apparently pressured the tech giants heavily, even threatening local employees of the companies with criminal prosecution. Of note, President Putin signed a law in July requiring out-of-country tech companies to set up representative offices in Russia if they have more than 500,000 Russian users. Now we perhaps have a better sense of why.

Senator Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), the top Senate Republican on the Helsinki Commission, said, “Moscow’s intimidation of local workers and businesses has left U.S. companies tainted for doing business in Russia.”

Wicker added, “The moral cost of doing business in Russia increases with every day that Putin and his cronies bully their opponents into submission to maintain political power.”

Unfortunately, Apple and Google’s cave to the Russian authorities may have effects beyond that nation. Sascha Meinrath, a professor at Penn State University told the Associated Press, “Now this is the poster child for political oppression,” and she suggested Apple and Google’s decision “have bolstered the probability of this happening again.”

Similarly, Deborah Brown of Human Rights Watch points to in-country representative office laws being passed in by other governments — she calls them “hostage-taking” measures — and warns they “may mean a wave of corporate-assisted censorship is on the horizon.”

How will you pray against the curtailing of liberty on the internet around the world — and here in the U.S.?

Aaron Mercer is a Contributing Writer with two decades of experience in Washington, D.C.’s public policy arena. (Photo Credit: Brett Jordan/Unsplash).