The surprise arrest of Telegram founder, Pavel Durovin France has raised concerns in Russia about a possible impact on its troops in Ukraine, who have come to rely on the encrypted messaging app to communicate on the front lines.
Two days after the Russian tech billionaire’s arrest, war bloggers, who are usually quite outspoken about problems in the Russian military, immediately sounded the alarm about Durov’s imprisonment. France has arrested Durov, “head of communications for the Russian armed forces”said a popular joke on the Internet.
“Telegram has become the main means of communication between units in the war zone – I guess it’s just the main direction of communications that I had no idea about,” Rybar, one of the most popular pro-war Telegram channels, said on Sunday, mocking a department of the Russian Defense Ministry.
Poor communication was often cited as one of the major shortcomings of Russian forces at the start of the invasion of Ukraine, and officers and soldiers were left to fend for themselves.
Proponents of the war in Ukraine expressed hope that Telegram’s potential legal problems would push the Kremlin to come up with new means of secure communication on the front line.
“Telegram has been the main messaging app in this war,” he said. Andrei Medvedeva popular pro-war TV host. “I hope the army is serious about creating an internal military app for our forces, because no one knows how long Telegram will remain as it is, or if it will exist at all.”
Alexei Sukhonkin, One blogger called Durov’s arrest “possibly the biggest tragedy of this August” and posted a photo of what is purportedly an artillery shell ready to be fired at Ukrainian positions with the caption “For Durov” scrawled on it.
French President Emmanuel Macron denied Durov’s arrest was political and said Monday it was up to investigative judges to decide on the case.
“The arrest of the president of Telegram on French soil took place in the context of an ongoing judicial investigation,” Macron wrote on X, claiming that he had read “false information” about France’s role in the case. “This is in no way a political decision. It is up to the judges to decide on the matter.”
Durov is being questioned for failing to respond to French authorities’ demands to intercept organized crime gangs’ communications on Telegram, he said. Laure Beccuau, the Paris attorney general.
The National Board Against Organized Crime (Junalco) is investigating some twelve crimes, including complicity in the management of an online platform used for organized crime, child pornography, drug trafficking, large-scale fraud, money laundering and illegal encryption services.
The investigating judge is expected to decide within two days whether Durov will be prosecuted and, if so, whether he will remain in custody or be released on bail.
On Sunday, French judicial authorities extended Durov’s detention. Durov was arrested on arrival at Paris-Le Bourget airport aboard his private jet from Azerbaijan, accused of failing to take measures to curb criminal use of his platform. The arrest sparked protests and accusations of state censorship from right-wing American figures such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Elon Musk.
In 2018, Telegram survived a brief nationwide ban after Durov refused to share encryption keys with the FSB, Russia’s intelligence agency. Three years later, however, Telegram caved to a Kremlin demand to block an account created by opposition politician Alexei Navalny’s team, which was sharing a list of candidates they were backing in parliamentary elections.
Pro-Kremlin politicians who once criticised Durov for refusing to cooperate with the FSB blamed US intelligence for targeting the Telegram founder. “The Americans want to be able to read all of Telegram – all messages, all users,” Vladimir Dzhabarov, deputy chairman of the foreign affairs committee in Russia’s upper house of parliament, told Rossiya 24 television on Monday. “They will have access to all private messages.”
Dmitry PeskovKremlin spokesman Vladimir Putin declined to comment on Durov’s arrest in France, pending further details on the case. He neither confirmed nor denied reports that senior Russian officials had been asked to delete sensitive information from their Telegram accounts after the arrest.
Separately, Russian activists have reported what appears to be a concerted online campaign to criticize France’s alleged hypocrisy on freedom of speech. The Botnadzor group said Monday it had tracked more than 1,400 comments mentioning the Telegram founder posted online since his arrest. Most insisted that Europe had no right to criticize Russia for its crackdown on media while it was pursuing the founder of the popular app in such a harsh manner.
The online fury, both genuine and inauthentic, appears to have been further fueled by an obscure blogger’s claim, subsequently recycled by mainstream Russian media, that Durov faces 20 years in prison.
French media outlets that broke the news on Saturday evening did not report a possible prison sentence, but that did not stop tech billionaire Musk from posting on X about the issue with the hashtag #FreePave.