Pavel Durov's arrest highlights Russia's love-hate bond with Telegram

By Bloomberg News

In Europe, Telegram is increasingly viewed by users and governments as a swamp filled with hate speech and illegal wares. In Russia, everybody from top Kremlin apparatchiks to Vladimir Putin’s harshest critics say it’s both that as well as the best source of uncensored information.
 

France’s arrest last weekend of Telegram’s billionaire founder Pavel Durov, who fled Russia for Dubai a decade ago, has been almost universally condemned in his native country. Senior officials, including Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and former President Dmitry Medvedev, have slammed it as a blow to secure communications and even freedom of speech.

Russia’s apparent stand in favor of free expression is striking — even ironic — considering the country has jailed hundreds of people for opposing its war in Ukraine. Yet outrage over Durov’s detention among Russians is real, and has resonated widely across society.

That’s because the messaging service, which has 900 million active users, plays a unique role in a country where the Kremlin heavily censors the media yet also values having a relief valve for public opinion. Further complicating matters, Telegram has become key to the country’s military efforts in Ukraine. 

“Telegram in Russia provides complete freedom of speech for civil society as well as pro-war and pro-Kremlin forces,” said Andrei Kolesnikov, an independent political scientist based in Moscow. “In Russia it’s become like television, except it has opposing viewpoints.”

Nowhere is the app’s split personality more visible than with regard to the war. Russia’s military uses Telegram for intelligence gathering, artillery adjustments and live feeds from helicopters, Lenta.ru reported on Sunday, citing a government official. It’s widely used by Ukrainian forces, too.

“Russian and Ukrainian officials and their militaries conduct operations in Telegram,” said Andrei Soldatov, an expert on Russia’s security services. “It is a platform for everyone.” 

It’s also where both sides have chosen to share graphic footage from the front, making the war perhaps the best documented in history. The app does not authenticate content, and allows users to set up channels that can distribute information to large groups, enabling posts to easily go viral. 

That’s helped Telegram become the essential source of uncensored news and commentary for Russians seeking alternatives to the official party line, as well as a way for the country’s swelling diaspora to maintain connections with friends and family. Its reputation for secure encryption — which many cybersecurity experts question — has won it fans within both the government and opposition. 

It’s also allowed its 39-year-old founder to grow the service into an everything app, according to Ani Aslanyan, an analyst who runs a Telegram channel devoted to cryptocurrencies.

“Initially it was a messenger that was easier to use than WhatsApp, but it soon became a vast media resource,” Aslanyan said. “Now you can get breaking news while shopping, exchanging currencies, meeting people and playing games.”

At the same time, Durov’s light-touch approach to content moderation has led to a proliferation of crime on the platform, which French officials cite as one reason for the CEO’s detention. Compared to rivals like WhatsApp and Signal, Telegram is widely used to sell drugs and other illegal fare, including child sexual abuse materials. Islamic State extremists used it to organize a terror attack in Moscow this year that killed 139 people, according to an official statement posted in March. 

“It is absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform,” the company wrote on Telegram following Durov’s detention. The founder, it added, “has nothing to hide.”

Durov, who was born in Russia and holds passports from there as well as France and the United Arab Emirates, has a checkered history with his homeland’s authorities. In 2006, he founded the Facebook-clone VKontakte, which grew into the country’s biggest social network thanks in part to the ease with which users could share pirated movies and music. 

He ran afoul of the Kremlin when he refused to shut down protest groups on the platform in 2011, and again when he declined to turn over data on Ukrainian users during the country’s 2013 Maidan protests. Durov ultimately left Russia and sold his stake in the VKontakte. 

He then founded Telegram, riling Russian law enforcement by refusing to provide them with the keys to read encrypted messages. That mirrors allegations by French officials, who claim that he hasn’t helped the authorities run legal wiretaps on criminal suspects.

Russia ordered a ban on Telegram in 2018, but gave up two years later when that proved impossible to enforce. Still, the lessons learned from that stand-off helped the Kremlin more effectively crack down on foreign media platforms after the country’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

It also spurred speculation that Durov had quietly agreed to cooperate with the authorities.

In addition to triggering an outpouring of support — including from Russia’s most famous foreign resident, National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden — Durov’s arrest on Saturday has led some prominent voices to criticize France for seeking to hold tech executives personally responsible for what happens on their platforms. 

Leonid Volkov, an ally of late Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, has been among those to condemn Durov’s detention. 

“European countries’ regulations are complex, not always clear, and many of them can and should be argued with,” Volkov wrote on Telegram. 

To be sure, some remain skeptical of the Kremlin’s new stance as a champion of free speech. Official statements in support of Durov are “pure PR by Russia,” said Tatyana Stanovaya, founder of political consultancy R.Politik. 

Among those who are similarly critical, Durov’s detention has led to further disappointment. 

“Russia’s liberal opposition thought of the West as its lodestone,” said Yevgeny Chichvarkin, a Russian businessman and Putin critic who lives in London. “And they’ve simply destroyed that.”