Arrest of Telegram founder could hurt public understanding of the Ukraine war

The arrest in France of the controversial Russian-born founder of Telegram—and potential actions against the social media and messaging platform itself—could reduce the public’s ability to fully understand the war in Ukraine.

The site is a key source of analysis and opinion of Russian military bloggers. 

“On the Russian side, Telegram is used by all levels of the Russian ministry of defense, from the senior officials down to specific units who report on their progress, the Russian government officials, by regional officials, by volunteers, by private citizens, and many others,” said Samuel Bendett, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and an adviser at the CNA Corporation.

French authorities have not yet released the reason Pavel Durov was arrested on Sunday by the National Anti-Fraud Office. The Russian embassy said it was taking “immediate steps” to intervene on Durov’s behalf. 

Durov, who has been called the Mark Zuckerberg of Russia, sprang to tech fame and fortune in 2006 when he founded the social networking site VKontakte—essentially a Russian version of Facebook, similar down to the cornflower blue-and-white color scheme. He was pushed out of the company in 2014 by allies of Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

Durov then founded Telegram from exile in Dubai, and the encrypted messaging app quickly became very popular in Russia and elsewhere in Europe. The app has become a destination for Russian military bloggers and analysts, dissidents living under autocratic regimes, and terrorists. Durov himself has taken a somewhat absolutist stance that the identity and data of Telegram users is more important than laws or legal requests from authorities in the countries where Telegram operates. 

Some important figures in the American tech world were quick to take to X with alarm. Balaji Srinivasan, the former chief technology officer of Coinbase and former general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz,  tweeted, “Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested in France. His ‘crime’ appears to be enabling free speech online.”

Paul Graham, one of the founders of the startup accelerator Y Combinator, tweeted, “It's hard to imagine a country both arresting the founder of Telegram and being a major startup hub.” 

SpaceX founder and X owner Elon Musk tweeted, “#FreePavel.”

While it’s well known that Telegram is a site for the illegal trade of child pornography, drugs, and contraband, less remarked upon is the role it plays in helping the public—particularly Western military analysts—better understand the war in Ukraine from the perspective of pro-Russian military sources. Analysis organizations like the Institute for the Study of War and others often rely on the site simply to report on the discussion about the war inside of Russia.  

Bendett said conflict-related information that comes from the site carries a specific, pro-Russian point of view, but it still provides an important window into how some of the war’s most vocal supporters perceive events on the ground. 

“The platform’s significance was underscored by a campaign by the Russian government in 2023 to co-op some independent Russian military bloggers and correspondents, and to influence others to be a lot less critical of the Kremlin and of the ministry of defense,” he told Defense One. 

Konstantin Sonin, economist and professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, said on X, “No question that Putin’s secret services and intelligence wanted Durov to give them control over Telegram the same way they got it over VKontakte. Less clear how much he actually yielded. During protests in Bashkorstan a few years ago, it seemed that FSB was able to use the data. During the Russia-Ukraine war, a popular Ukrainian channel helping Russian soldiers to desert was censored, etc. Given how actively Russian officials work to get to Durov these days, there might be a lot at stake.”

Still, Bendett said, “It’s not clear exactly what Durov’s arrest will mean for Telegram going forward, and what it means for specific sources and or specific origins of data that is populated there about the war.”