Just like with China, Apple will simply roll over, like an obedient puppy, and do whatever's asked of them.
It's funny how Apple only punches down - against app devs or other companies that it can bully, but the moment it faces a formidable adversary (China, Russia, ..), it cowers to safety.
It isn't power that makes Apple comply but the value of the Chinese market.
Russia's market isn't that attractive but it's doing ok and it can take advantage of the requirements China enforces anyway. That is, there is no point for companies to leave Russia when they're complying to similar demands in China anyway.
There are plenty of western apps doing surveillance on people and selling data, as the article mentions. I'm not sure how abiding by countries regulations when the only thing about them is that they aren't defined by the USA's is really a bad thing.
1. USA: Apple denies access to the FBI on known/convicted terrorist's phone, iCloud. China: Apple moves entire iCloud operation over to a government cloud, with no privacy guarantees.
2. USA: Apple blocks app stores within third party apps. China: WeChat/govt. threaten Apple with censure, to which Apple succumbs allowing "apps" on WeChat-china.
3. Apple sure as heck won't approve/deny apps based on government input, but they damn well will remove Taiwan emojis, Hong Kong protestors apps, etc at China's behest.
So no - Apple only punches down, never up. They aren't complying with local law, they are routinely violating their own moral grandstanding on privacy, freedom, tracking, ...
Your analysis is correct, just missing one thing: apple can pretend to refuse the domestic government requests. It is good for their reputation and profits.
But given what they do abroad, I have no reason to believe they don't do the same at home. If they don't, a secret court order with a gag clause and jail term for those who refuse to comply will make them obey.
Neither apple nor the government has any interest in this public display of force. Plausible deniability again: make people believe apple stand for their right, even if you don't get stuff to pin down a know bad guy or two - doesn't matter if you still have plenty on them or if they're dead
My cynical view on this is that Russia is preparing for a conflict where they can cut ties with western infrastructure, while keeping themselves covered by domestic alternatives. It plays well with their efforts to boost robustness of their local internet under a severance from the rest of the world.
We need to take these foreign stories as serious cautionary tales. For anybody who has been in doubt so far, this is what all this surveillance tech looks like as soon as the government decides it wants to gain power with it
"Others have raised concerns that the Russian-made software could be used to spy on users." ..ehm right, because there's no spying on user activities when you use google's preinstalled apps :/
Well, looks like they are planning to do this not just with smartphones, but also with smart TVs and even computers. (I guess the latter means that you wouldn't be allowed to install and use an OS that is not supported by the required software.)
For Russian users this is actually beneficial. You see, they have their own "Google" that serves that market much better: Yandex. The first thing I did when I bought my mom a smartphone there is I installed Yandex launcher and a bunch of other Yandex stuff - out of the box it's unusable to anyone beyond age 30. Not only is their search is better when searching the Russian-speaking segment of the internet, their local news, maps, etc are all better as well. Their maps, for instance, tell you where the speed cameras are on the highway so you could avoid a ticket. They even have their own voice assistant, and it works OK too.
It's funny how Apple only punches down - against app devs or other companies that it can bully, but the moment it faces a formidable adversary (China, Russia, ..), it cowers to safety.