Russia declares in siege and captures the founder of Telegram, Pavel Durov
The secret services accuse him of facilitating the recruitment of young people to commit terrorist acts
MoscowRussian security services continue their crusade against Telegram and its founder, Pavel Durov. While the Kremlin and its technocrats resist definitively burying the application, aware of its popularity in the country, the FSB - the former KGB - goes ahead, accusing its head of "collaborating with terrorist activities" and putting him on the wanted list. According to the spies, the platform has done nothing to prevent Ukrainian secret services from using a dating chatbot to recruit young Russians and adolescents with the aim of carrying out
According to the FSB, over the last year, 46 Russians between the ages of 12 and 22 have been enticed to commit terrorist acts through the Daivintxik channel, widely used in Russia among young people to meet people. They claim that Ukrainian intelligence agents posed as girls to try to gain the trust of boys and get them to click on phishing links. Once they fell into the trap, they would contact them again, pretending to be Russian security officials, threaten them, and demand that they commit crimes.
The alleged evidence of the crimes, paradoxically disseminated by the Russian Investigative Committee through Telegram, shows young people confessing to having been victims of anonymous intermediaries. Another paradox is that Russian state media have published chats that would demonstrate the methods of Ukrainian special services, but the images show that the interface is not Telegram's, but VKontakte's, the Russian Facebook. In fact, Daivintxik remains accessible on VK and Max, the messaging service recently developed by the Kremlin with the aim of displacing its foreign competitors. And one last paradoxical element is that Telegram is one of the preferred networks for Russian spies to recruit saboteurs abroad.
Following this accusation, Russia has included Durov on the list of internationally wanted persons. The creator of Telegram, born on Russian territory but with passports from the United Arab Emirates and France, currently resides in France, according to Moscow authorities. Should he return to his country of origin, he would face a prison sentence that could range from five or six years to life imprisonment. When French police arrested Durov two years ago accused of insufficient cooperation with the authorities, the Kremlin ridiculed these claims and Vladimir Putin described the prosecution as "selective".
In response, Telegram's official channel on X has limited itself to publishing a photo of Durov giving the middle finger to the camera. The businessman announced at the beginning of the year that Russia had opened a criminal investigation against him and accused them of fabricating pretexts to restrict access to his application in an attempt to "suppress the right to privacy and freedom of expression". In fact, previously, Durov had already received millionaire fines for not removing channels in which terrorist acts were allegedly facilitated or in which LGTBI content, considered extremist in Russia, was disseminated.
Clash between technocrats and spies
A few months ago, the Kremlin ordered the messaging platform to be blocked unless it cooperated with Russian security agencies. Currently, users can only access it through a VPN network, which allows censorship to be bypassed. However, on Monday, presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated that negotiations with the company were ongoing, although Telegram representatives did not seem willing to back down.
This resistance from Putin's political circle to definitively ban the platform clashes with the discretion of the FSB, determined to put an end once and for all to a tool that escapes its control. The Presidential Administration does not want to deliver the final blow to Telegram because citizens use it extensively to communicate and inform themselves. The growing internet blockade is a very unpopular issue in Russia, which is largely causing the president's party to fall in the polls with less than two months to go before the legislative elections.
