I keep thinking about infamous Telegram 'war' with russian cenrosship agency, RosKomNadzor. Telegram was blocked via russian ISPs, but was never removed from Ru

I keep thinking about infamous Telegram 'war' with russian cenrosship agency, RosKomNadzor. Telegram was blocked via russian ISPs, but was never removed from Russian sections of Google Play and Apple Appstore. We now see that Apple and Google, time after time, easily submit to the will of local governments and remove questionable apps. Yet, Telegram was NOT removed. Russian media agencies claim that RosKomNadzor asked Google&Apple to suspend the app, but the source for all media publications was always the same press-release by RKN. So it keeps me thinking: what if the world was played and all this 'blocking' scandal was just a publicity stunt to raise Telegram's profile as a service that does not give up data to authorities? Does anyone know if we can confirm via Google & Apple that they were asked to remove Telegram from play stores (and refused), or... they weren't really asked at all?