The founder and CEO of Telegram, Pavel Durov has been arrested in France after traveling there from Baku, Azerbeijan. Following his arrest, The Russian Embassy in France requested access to Pavel Durov. Pavel Durov is a French and Russian citizen, and grew up in Saint Petersburg, Russia. He also has UAE citizenship. France is not legally obliged to extradite him to Russia.
Pavel Durov was arrested for repeatedly ignoring calls from the French authorities to take down illegal content from Telegram including pedophilia, arms and human trafficking and drug sales. He may have also been aware that an arrest warrant was issued against him before traveling to France. On the 20th August, Pavel Durov met with Vladimir Putin in Baku. There are also reports that Pavel Durov is cooperating with the French authorities.
Telegram, which has up to 900 million users worldwide is Russia’s main disinformation tool both locally in Russia and internationally. The Russian security services successfully launched multiple disinformation campaigns in Africa through Telegram.
Telegram has servers in Dubai and Russia and its servers in Russia are monitored by the FSB. Telegram has been consistently unprofitable over the years, however, during this time of massive financial losses in running the Telegram application, Pavel Durov’s wealth and net worth kept increasing exponentially. Several Russian dissidents have in the past pinpointed their blame on Telegram for being outed to the Russian authorities.
It is also untrue that Telegram is an open source software app. The frontend of the application is indeed open source, but the backend is a closed secret.
Telegram is the platform where Russian organisations such as the Wagner Group relay their official statements. Pavel Durov has been very selective in choosing which warring organisations are able to use the application. Back in October 2023, Telegram banned the official Hamas channels from its platform.
Reports that in the past Pavel Durov was “anti-Putin” and a “pro-Western liberal” are meaningless. Russia, which has one of the most sophisticated intelligence apparatuses in the world, has a long history of using pseudo-dissidents as spies. A case in point is Sergei Tretyakov, who fled to the United States under the pretense of being a dissident while conducting disinformation campaigns there.
The Russian government is currently conducting a wide international campaign for Pavel Durov’s release.
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