Muscle ...

Russian President Vladimir Putin holds an iPhone in 2017. Over the past year, Putin has moved to bring foreign technology companies to heel. (Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images)

Muscle, you know, the enforcement part of being a successful bookie operation, used without hesitation when someones loses a bet and doesn't pay up, is now being used by Putin vis a vis tech companies like Apple and Google when said enterprises do something not in a accordance with how this particular mob boss does business.

To whit ...

Russian agents came to the home of Google’s top executive in Moscow to deliver a frightening ultimatum last September: take down an app that had drawn the ire of Russian President Vladimir Putin within 24 hours or be taken to prison.

The use of spies pays ...

Google quickly moved the woman to a hotel where she checked in under an assumed name and might be protected by the presence of other guests and hotel security, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The same agents — believed by company officials to be from Russia’s FSB, a successor to the KGB intelligence service — then showed up at her room to tell her the clock was still ticking.

End result ...

Within hours, an app designed to help Russians register protest votes against Putin could no longer be downloaded from Google or Apple, whose main representative in Moscow faced a similarly harrowing sequence. Titans of American technology had been brought to their knees by some of the most primitive intimidation tactics in the Kremlin playbook.

Vito understands ...

The unnerving encounters, which have not previously been disclosed, were part of a broader campaign that Putin intensified last year to erode sources of internal opposition — moves now helping him maintain his hold on power amid a global backlash over the invasion of Ukraine.