The detention of entrepreneur and co-founder of the Telegram messenger, Pavel Durov, by the French prosecutor’s office has become one of the most notable events of recent weeks. Discussions surrounding this case have evolved in several directions.
Some have sought to explore what the balance between individual liberty and national security should look like in a democratic state. Others have focused on whether the Durov affair is connected to broader attempts by governments to curb the growing influence of major digital companies. A third group has debated the responsibility of messaging platform leaders for content posted by their users. Meanwhile, a fourth has delved into the topic of digital sovereignty. However, it seems that all these debates may distract us from the core issue, and the Durov case should be viewed from a somewhat different perspective.
The Russian Opposition and Authorities: Free Durov!
Durov’s detention has paradoxically united staunch opponents of the Putin regime and its supporters under a common banner. The similarity in the positions of Kremlin mouthpieces and anti-Putin influencers was so extensive that they reposted the same texts defending Durov, down to the last comma. All of them, in unison, insist on the political undertones of this situation and accuse the west of violating freedom of speech. Whereas for Russian opposition politicians, any state is a potential source of evil, the Kremlin is focused on discrediting western states and the liberal democratic order in particular. Thus, for the former, Pavel Durov is almost seen as a prophet and martyr, while for the latter, he is a misguided compatriot who naively believed that there is more freedom in the west than in Russia.
Russian emigrants have been particularly vocal in campaigning for support of Durov. Despite France being a democratic state governed by the rule of law, with civilian oversight of law enforcement agencies and intelligence services, they have vigorously criticised the French authorities, accusing them of violating the right to freedom of speech and privacy. They viewed Pavel Durov’s detention as a new chapter in the ongoing conflict between a state striving for total control and a digital society. According to this logic, states and their special services, regardless of their inner nature, instinctively gravitate towards total control of the populace. And in this imagined confrontation, the Russian émigrés side with the latter. From their perspective, Telegram represents a kind of spear of freedom, capable of putting the state in its place and preventing a digital dictatorship modelled after the Chinese example. In this regard, Pavel Durov has even been dubbed the “new Assange” and a hero who has guaranteed the world the right to privacy.
Essentially, the Durov affair has revealed that anarchist and libertarian views, characterised by a strong anti-statist sentiment, are widespread among Russian emigrant politicians and intellectuals. No matter how democratic a state may be, they harbour a deep, endemic distrust towards it. For them, the whole issue is reduced to a binary choice, formulated by one of the Russian opposition politicians: “Intelligence agencies and governments are the same everywhere. They strive for control over society… You are either on the side of the state or on the side of civil society.”
In other words, whether it is Navalny’s vision of a “Beautiful Russia of the future” — or any other concept of a post-Putin Russia — the very idea of the state, within the value framework of anti-Putin communities, is not something for which they are willing to take any significant risks or make sacrifices. Therefore, it would be naive to assume that people with such ideological stances are, in principle, capable of seriously fighting for power in Russia.
Russian opposition figures abroad have aligned themselves with Durov, even though Telegram has a history of close interaction with the Russian government in censoring anti-Kremlin channels. For instance, ahead of the 2021 State Duma elections, Telegram’s administration, at the Kremlin’s behest, blocked a “smart voting” chatbot, which Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) had launched to mobilise the protest electorate. Alexei Navalny expressed “deep dismay and disappointment” with Pavel Durov and his messenger at that time. Despite this, Navalny’s associates swiftly demonstrated their solidarity with Pavel Durov following his detention at Le Bourget airport north of the French capital.
Durov brothers, Telegram & the Kremlin
Pavel Durov rose to widespread fame after launching the social network VKontakte in 2006, modelled after Facebook. He was later even called “Russia’s Zuckerberg.” A key role in the creation of VKontakte was played by his elder brother, Nikolai, and his team of programmers. Although Pavel Durov has never disclosed the sources and amounts of funding he received, it is believed that the initial capital for VKontakte came from his school friend, Viacheslav Mirilashvili. His father, Mikhail Mirilashvili, was one of the most influential figures in St. Petersburg in the 1990s and owned nearly all of the major casinos in “Russia’s criminal capital.” Interestingly, the oversight of gambling establishments was carried out by Vladimir Putin, who was a city official at that time.
Pavel Durov himself has repeatedly expressed his sympathy for libertarian ideas and stated that he developed his new messenger not for profit but to enable people’s right to their freedoms. It seemed that anyone with such a worldview was doomed to perpetual conflict with the increasingly authoritarian Russian state. While at VKontakte, Durov ostentatiously refused to comply with the Prosecutor’s demands to shut down the accounts of Alexei Navalny’s supporters in 2011 and 2014. The situation was ultimately resolved with Durov selling his stake in Vkontakte to Kremlin-aligned businessmen. Soon after, he decided to leave Russia, declaring that there was no turning back for him.
At the time of his departure from Russia, Pavel Durov had the image of an ideological fighter against state censorship, which greatly contributed to the promotion of the Telegram app he and his brother launched in 2013. As demand for the messenger grew, it began to attract the attention of Russian authorities. The FSB and Roskomnadzor, a Russian media regulator and censorship agency, repeatedly demanded that Telegram provide encryption keys for user correspondence, but Telegram’s management refused to comply. In the spring of 2018, a Russian court sanctioned the blocking of Telegram within Russia until it provided the FSB with the keys for decoding messages. However, by June 2020, the block was lifted, which could indicate that informal agreements had been reached between Telegram and the Russian special services. Soon after, Roskomnadzor even created an official account on Telegram. The Durov brothers’ messenger faced effective bans in several countries, but it was only in Russia that Pavel Durov boldly resisted the authorities and achieved a demonstrative triumph, which naturally invites a lot of questions.
It is, therefore, worth noting that, since 2020, the primary focus of criticism from Durov has shifted away from the Russian state towards transnational big tech companies like Apple and Google. According to him, it is these entities that pose the main threat to freedom of speech. Equally interesting is that he chose to reiterate this point in a recent interview with Tucker Carlson, a figure very much associated with pro-Russian rather than libertarian views. In the same interview, Pavel Durov claimed that he avoids travelling to “big geopolitical powers” such as China, the US, or Russia. However, according to a published journalistic investigation, Durov visited Russia over 50 times between 2015 and 2021. In other words, once the Russian authorities unblocked Telegram, Durov’s rhetorical positions and actions began to diverge from the principles he once championed.
Telegram After Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine
For a person with libertarian views who owns a popular electronic platform, Pavel Durov’s relationship with the Russian authorities has been relatively smooth. It seems that, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the two sides have become even closer. When Russian troops attacked Ukraine in February 2022, western countries set about seriously combatting the presence of Russian propaganda in their media space. Facebook banned access to accounts of Russian propaganda, while Google started blocking YouTube channels linked to Russian state media and prohibited them from earning ad revenue from video views. Meanwhile, Twitter removed several posts by the Russian Embassy in the UK that contained false information and stopped promoting tweets from accounts associated with the Russian government.
Telegram behaved quite differently from the western big tech companies. On the fourth day after the start of what Russia refers to as a “special military operation,” and before Russia formally enacted laws imposing criminal penalties for “discrediting the Russian army,” Pavel Durov, avoiding the use of words like “war” or “invasion,” warned users that due to the increasing spread of “unverified information related to the Ukrainian events,” Telegram’s management would consider the possibility of ceasing operations in Russia and Ukraine if the military actions escalated. In other words, he expressed a willingness to disregard the principle of freedom of information he had previously defended, precisely at the moment when Ukraine was trying to reveal to the world the horrors of the Russian army’s crimes.
Taking advantage of the lack of moderation, Telegram has been used by Russian authorities to spread fake news and manipulate public opinion, posing a significant problem for the Ukrainian authorities. Additionally, it serves for communication between Russian military forces and for targeting artillery strikes against objectives in Ukraine. Essentially, Telegram has become a weapon for the Kremlin on the informational front of the war against Ukraine and the west.
Interestingly, after the invasion of Ukraine had begun, Russian state organisations and executive bodies decided to shift their media activities exclusively to “Russian platforms,” including Telegram. Furthermore, due to increased censorship and the blocking of WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook within Russia, Telegram significantly expanded its Russian-speaking audience. From February to April 2022, the number of Russians who opened Durov brothers’ messenger at least once a day doubled, reaching approximately 40 million.
It seems that a key asset of Pavel Durov in Russia remains his talented cryptography specialist and older brother, Nikolai. It was he who was responsible for creating Telegram in its current technical form. His current whereabouts are unknown, but he was working as a research fellow at the St. Petersburg branch of the Mathematical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences until at least the end of February 2024. Most likely, Russian authorities were aware of the French prosecutor’s decision to arrest the Durov brothers as early as the spring of 2024, after which all mentions of Nikolai were removed from the institute’s website.
At the same time, Telegram’s popularity is also growing in the EU. As of February 2024, the average monthly number of its users was 41 million, not far from the 45 million user threshold established by the EU Digital Services Act. Exceeding this threshold would classify Telegram as a “very large online platform,” leading to significant obligations for content moderation to combat disinformation and mandatory reporting on the company’s compliance efforts. Basically, this could become an effective tool in combating Russian fake news on Telegram.
Apparently, the Russian authorities strive to avoid such a development, as does Pavel Durov, whom his older brother once described as someone who “understands very well how to use provocations.” It appears that both the Russian authorities and Durov are deliberately escalating the situation surrounding him and Telegram, aiming to stir up significant outrage among libertarians and human rights advocates. Their strategy seems to be creating doubts among European decision-makers about the measures taken against Telegram while diverting attention from the dangers of Russian disinformation to broader debates about the balance between security and free speech or issues of digital sovereignty. In this context, the simultaneous presence of Pavel Durov and Vladimir Putin in Azerbaijan, along with Telegram’s failure to provide the European Commission with accurate data on the number of users shortly before Durov’s detention, no longer come across as mere coincidences.
Although Durov’s arrest has attracted notable media coverage, the response has been rather tepid. In the west, criticism of the French authorities for alleged attacks on free speech has largely come from fringe political groups and a handful of voices within the tech industry. Nevertheless, it is clear that Russian authorities will persist in their efforts to split up the debate around Telegram as a channel for Russia’s malign activities and proliferate distracting narratives. What is regrettable is that rather than focusing on more urgent security challenges, some observers, as well as many Russian politicians in exile, are — whether knowingly or not — playing along with this staged drama of a heroic struggle for free speech.
Views expressed in ICDS publications are those of the author(s). This article was first published on Diplomaatia.