Russia has accused the US of interfering in the Russian parliamentary elections in about a week.
The app “Smart Vote” of the imprisoned Kremlin opponent Alexej Navalnyj is “connected in one way or another with the Pentagon,” said the spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Sakharova, on the state broadcaster Radio Rossii.
Navalnyj's supporters use the app to call on the Russians to vote against the Kremlin's United Russia party from September 17th to 19th.
The associated homepage has been blocked in Russia for a few days.
The authorities have also prohibited the Internet search engines Google and Yandex from displaying the term “Smart Voting” in search results.
Political scientist Tatiana Stanowaja interpreted Sakharova's statements as an attempt to make the “Smart Vote” app a topic of national security.
In the longer term, for example, the Russian authorities could take more extensive action against the protest election calls by Navalnyj's team, wrote Stanovaya on Telegram.
Sakharova also referred to a conversation between Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov and the US Ambassador in Moscow, John Sullivan, on Friday. Sullivan had been declared that the Russian side had "irrefutable evidence" of violations of the law by US Internet giants in connection with the upcoming Duma election, it said in a statement on the website of the ministry. The violation was not explained. From the US side, there was initially no reaction to the allegations.
The supervisory authority Roskomnadzor had already warned the American companies Google and Apple last week on allegations of influencing the election. The companies had refused to remove the app of the arrested opposition activist Navalny from their smartphone app stores. The Russian authorities have classified all organizations with ties to Navalnyj as "extremist". Almost all known representatives of the opposition are not allowed to vote.