2024-09-01 03:34:00
Frantic comments on social networks, rallies in support of Pavel Durov in several cities across the country, paper airplanes – a reference to the logo of the Telegram messaging service – left in front of the French embassy in Moscow, T-shirts and bracelets bearing the hashtag #FreeDurov sold on the Internet… The arrest in France, eight days ago, of the head of Telegram has caused a wave of indignation but above all panic in Russia. The 39-year-old Russian billionaire, who holds a French passport as well as an Emirati one and a passport from the Caribbean archipelago of Saint Kitts and Nevis, is being prosecuted as part of an investigation launched by the cybercrime section of the Paris prosecutor’s office. The investigation involves twelve counts, including complicity in the distribution of child pornography and drug trafficking, money laundering and refusal to cooperate with the authorities in investigations. The businessman, a self-proclaimed libertarian, rejects any moderation of content on his platform. It has around 950 million monthly users worldwide and is worth, according to its creator, more than 30 billion dollars. After ninety-six hours in police custody, Pavel Durov was released on bail of 5 million euros. But he is now subject to strict judicial control with a ban on leaving French territory and an obligation to report twice a week to the police station.
A week after Durov was arrested as he got off his private jet at Le Bourget, the subject continues to stir up Telegram channels in Russia. How can we explain such a reaction from a population that is usually so apathetic to external events? For Russian political scientist Yekaterina Schulmann, it is partly the result of the place occupied by social networks in Russia in the absence of a free public sphere and real media. “Citizens have nowhere else to go, so they tend to overuse platforms for discussions that in a free society should take place in a parliament and on television… This is a phenomenon that we have observed in Russia, but generally in all autocracies, such as Iran for example.” According to the non-resident researcher at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin, any initiative perceived as an attempt at regulation and control or any threat against these platforms triggers a traumatic reaction. For several years, Russians have seen the tools they used to use disappear. LiveJournal was bought by a Russian oligarch and then destroyed. Facebook is banned. YouTube is now, according to the official expression, in degraded mode. All that remains is Telegram.
The initial plan was to free ourselves from borders and national laws.
Julien Nocetti, researcher at Ifri
In fact, the platform is very popular in Russia, used both as a secure messaging service to communicate with relatives and as a place for exchanges for families whose men have gone to the front, as well as a source of information and a space for free expression. All independent Russian media, whose sites are blocked on the Internet, distribute their content via this application thanks to the possibility of creating subscriber channels. “Overall, in the eyes of Russians, Telegram represents the last window of digital freedom to try to escape the rampant censorship in the country,” notes Julien Nocetti, associate researcher at the French Institute of International Relations (Ifri). Facebook and Instagram were banned on Russian territory in March 2022 and X (formerly Twitter) was restricted, a few weeks after the launch of the large-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Rally in support of the founder of Telegram near the French embassy in Moscow, August 25. (Credits: ©LTD / HANDOUT/TELEGRAM’S ACCOUNT OF ANDREI DAVANKOV/AFP)
“For those who oppose Putin’s war against Ukraine and his political repression, Telegram is the only way to communicate, which is why many opposition figures and opinion leaders are now disconcerted by Durov’s arrest,” comments political economist Konstantin Sonin in an article in Moscow Times.
And they are not the only ones to denounce the indictment of the “Russian Mark Zuckerberg”. Since the start of the war in Ukraine thirty months ago, Telegram has become a central tool in the conflict, actively used on both sides of the front. In Russia, it is used by the army as a means of communication with the troops but also for Kremlin propaganda via a myriad of channels broadcasting its vision of the war. In its time, the private mercenary company Wagner, created by Yevgeny Prigozhin, was also a major consumer of Telegram. As for the very influential pro-war bloggers, who claim up to several tens of thousands of subscribers, they particularly appreciate the lack of moderation on the network, which allows them to publish ultra-violent videos. For them, the Durov affair rekindles the debate about a messaging tool made in Russia. “This is of vital importance,” even defends the powerful Rybar channel, close to the Russian Ministry of Defense. “This idea is a chestnut that has been coming back to the table regularly for fifteen years,” according to Julien Nocetti. The specialist in Russian cyber strategy doubts that this project will see the light of day in the near future. “So far, all companies aiming to create national applications, search engines or operating systems in Russia have systematically failed for technical reasons but above all for absolutely astronomical corruption problems,” says the researcher.
Rally in support of the founder of Telegram near the French embassy in Moscow, August 25. (Credits: ©LTD / ALEXEY MAISHEV/SPUTNIK/SIPA)
In Moscow, the indictment of Pavel Durov also worries government officials and senior civil servants. All government departments and services use Telegram on a daily basis. “He must be rescued immediately… His arrest could be politically motivated and could be a tool to access personal information of Telegram users; this must not be allowed,” stormed, on Telegram of course, Vladislav Davankov, deputy chairman of the State Duma. For her part, the head of the public television Russia Today, Margarita Simonian, called on Russians to delete their sensitive messages, claiming that the businessman was about to give the decryption keys to the French police.
“Our authorities believe that the French government seized Pavel Durov to extract these keys from him in order to read the exchanges between officials or Russian military, affirme Iekaterina Schulmann. The idea that the French government might be more interested in underground Islamic groups that organize terrorist acts via messaging does not even cross the self-centered minds of Russians.
National Anti-Fraud Office (ONAF), where Pavel Dourov was questioned for several days, in Ivry-sur-Seine, south of Paris. STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN/AFP
The Durov affair carries with it its usual anti-Western rhetoric. For State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, there is no doubt that “Washington is behind Durov’s arrest.” For its part, the Kremlin warned that the French justice system must provide evidence. “very serious allegations” which were brought against the young billionaire. “Otherwise it will be obvious that this is an attempt to restrict freedom of communication, or even direct intimidation of the head of a large company,” threatened his spokesman, Dmitry Peskov.
In Moscow, the indictment of Pavel Durov also worries government officials and senior civil servants.
“It’s quite funny to see the Russian authorities defending Pavel Durov when we know the history of Telegram and the initial project which was to free itself from borders and national laws,” Julien Nocetti notes. Encrypted messaging was born in 2013. Pavel Durov has always said that the idea came to him when he was under pressure from the Russian authorities and was looking for a secure method to communicate with his brother, Nikolai, a genius mathematician who was also wanted by the French authorities. A few years earlier, the two men had founded the social network VKontakte, a copy-paste of Facebook in Russia. The Russian intelligence services demanded that they disclose user data, which they refused to do. In April 2014, Pavel Durov sold his stake in VKontakte, which came under the control of oligarchs close to the Kremlin, before going into exile abroad. “There is no going back,” he declared then.
This episode is far, however, from having marked the end of relations between the man always dressed in black, like Neo, the hero of the trilogy Matrixand Russia. Starting in 2018, the FSB demanded Telegram’s encryption keys. Faced with Pavel Durov’s refusal, the Russian Internet watchdog Roskomnadzor initially tried to block the messaging service, without success. For two years, the pressure was at its peak, before suddenly stopping in 2020. This week, the independent Russian media iStories revealed that the co-founder of Telegram increased his trips to his native country after 2014: no fewer than fifty stays between 2015 and 2021. “This casts doubt on the scenario he presented of his conflict with the FSB, where he gave the finger to the authorities, fled St. Petersburg at full speed to seek refuge abroad and created Telegram, underlines Julien Nocetti. His relations with the Russian authorities appear to be much more complex than he has been willing to say.” In Moscow, Dmitry Peskov again defended him on Friday. “Pavel Durov is a Russian citizen and can freely visit Russia,” he explained. He was keen to point out, however, that the Kremlin had not held any talks with him.
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