Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday said relations with France are at their “lowest” level following the arrest of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov at an airport outside Paris on Saturday. The arrest has prompted a stream of condemnations from those in power in Russia – even though the Kremlin itself tried to ban Telegram in 2018.
French judicial authorities late Monday extended the detention of Durov, who co-founded the popular messaging app, for up to 48 hours. The Paris prosecutor’s office on the same day stated that Durov had been arrested as part of an ongoing probe into crimes related to child pornography, drug trafficking and fraudulent transactions on the platform.
In Russia, an unlikely mix of voices have been speaking up in support of Durov. Some in the political opposition and some from circles close to President Vladimir Putin are condemning the arrest of the tech mogul, who was born in Russia in 1984.
Russian political activist Georgy Alburov described the arrest as “profoundly unfair” in an article published Sunday in The Moscow Times. Alburov, one of the lead investigators in the late Kremlin foe Alexei Navalny’s anti-corruption foundation, said Durov’s arrest is a “significant blow to freedom of speech”, according to the anglophone news site.
The Kremlin has had a similar response. Lavrov’s comment on Tuesday came after Kremlin spokesman Dmity Peskov said that France had levelled “very serious” charges against Durov “that require no less serious evidence”.
“Otherwise, this would be a direct attempt to restrict freedom of communication,” said Peskov, who also warned Paris against trying to intimidate Durov.
Foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova criticised the arrest as symptomatic of how “liberal dictatorships” undercut commitments to human rights “when it suits them” in an interview with a Russian state broadcaster, The Moscow Times reported on Sunday. A deputy vice president of the lower-house Duma, Vladislav Davankov, joined a rally outside the French embassy in Moscow to demand the release of Durov.
Across the spectrum
“The most fascinating aspect (of the immediate aftermath of Durov’s arrest) was the spectrum of those who promptly came to his defence,” wrote the US-based Russian economist Konstantin Sonin in a Moscow Times opinion piece published on Monday. Sonin noted that “Russian military bloggers, worried about the potential for the West to access Telegram’s secrets, joined the chorus of (Durov) supporters”.
At first glance, the pro-Durov stance in Russian opposition circles may seem the more logical. The career path of Telegram's 39-year-old founder, whose fortune Forbes estimates at more than $15 billion, looks more like one of a dissident than a pro-Putin oligarch.
Durov launched his career as a mogul by co-founding VKontakte, the Russian equivalent of Facebook, with his brother in 2006. They refused to provide the government with access to user data, according to Mariëlle Wijermars, an assistant professor in internet governance at Maastricht University.
A tug-of-war with the Kremlin eventually led the young Russian entrepreneur to relinquish the reins of VKontakte in 2013 to wealthy businessmen close to Putin. Durov then opted for exile and found refuge in Dubai, where he launched Telegram the same year. The co-founder presented the new messaging service as the ultimate weapon against state censorship.
Durov’s early career enabled him “to gain a certain amount of trust among Russians. His charisma and style of speaking contributed to the migration of some Russian internet users” to Telegram, said Ksenia Ermoshina, a specialist in the Russian internet at the Centre for Internet and Society at France’s National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS).
A self-billed haven for freedom of expression, Telegram eventually attracted the ire of the Kremlin, which seeks to monitor cyberspace. In 2018, the government tried to muzzle the platform, which increased its popularity in Russia.
“The Russians thought that if [Telegram] was blocked, it could be trusted,” said Ermoshina. Ironically, during the period when the platform was blocked (but easily accessible by setting up a virtual private network, or VPN), the number of accounts created by members of the Russian presidential administration and elected representatives multiplied.
Durov's arrest in France should theoretically be a source of satisfaction for a Russian government that has failed to control the man sometimes dubbed the "rebel" or "Robin Hood" of the Russian web.
But that would be ignoring the other side of Telegram's success story. The relationship between the platform and the Kremlin is “more complicated than some might think”, said Jeff Hawn, a Russia specialist at the London School of Economics (LSE). “I would define it as distant but cordial.”
Durov’s “refusal to provide (the government with) information about VKontakte users hews more to his libertarian philosophy than to a political opposition to Vladimir Putin”, the CNRS’s Ermoshina said.
The Telegram boss does not seem to be more cooperative with governments that are less authoritarian than Moscow. In this respect, Durov is more reminiscent of a self-declared free speech absolutist like Elon Musk than a Russian dissident in exile. The owner of X expressed his solidarity with Durov after his arrest.
The lifting of Russia’s blockage of Telegram in 2020 left sceptics in the opposition. “There’s been some concern … that maybe there was some secret deal” with the government to end it, said Maastricht’s Wijermars, emphasising that there are only “allegations”.
In Ukraine, where the full-scale Russian invasion led to even more popularity for Telegram, these allegations have caused “growing criticism that Telegram is not as neutral as it used to be”, said Yevgeniy Golovchenko, a Russian disinformation specialist at the University of Copenhagen. “There is fear that [Telegram] may be collaborating with the Russian regime and [some] argue it’s a threat to national security.”
Since the start of the Ukraine war, Durov has been careful not to take a position on the conflict. “He hasn’t come out in favour of the war, but hasn’t spoken against it,” said the LSE’s Hawn.
This is one of the reasons why some close to Putin may have found “a very effective tool for propaganda. [Durov] represents a certain kind of elite who doesn’t want to get involved” in the war, Hawn said.
Russian propagandists have seized on Durov's arrest to try to convey the message that all Russians, wherever they are, “need Russia’s protection”, he said.
'Living without a homeland'
Former Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev wrote on Telegram that Durov’s arrest would prove that the tech mogul, who obtained a French passport in 2021, was mistaken to think that “citizenship or residency in other countries” would allow him to “be a brilliant ‘citizen of the world’, living well without a homeland”, the Moscow Times reported. “To all our common enemies now, he is Russian.”
This viewpoint fits perfectly into the narrative Putin has been developing since the war began of a Russia forced to come to the aid of its citizens, wherever they may be.
“[Putin] justified the war in Ukraine by saying it was necessary to protect the Russians in the Donbas,” said Ermoshina.
“It’s a very pragmatic and opportunistic approach to propaganda,” said disinformation specialist Golovchenko. Whatever the Kremlin’s opinion of Durov, by denouncing his arrest, Moscow is “sending the following message to the Russian population and notably the youth: look how France, the country of liberty, treats entrepreneurs”, Ermoshina explained.
French President Emmanuel Macron said Monday on X that Durov’s arrest “took place as part of an ongoing judicial investigation. It is in no way a political decision.”
Durov's arrest may nonetheless be causing some anxiety in the corridors of the Kremlin.
“There are many people in the Russian establishment, the Russian government (and) the Russian military who are very afraid because Telegram is used very, very widely,” said Wijermars. There is fear that Durov’s arrest “might give France access to all kinds of sensitive information”.
It is thus in Moscow’s interest that his stay in the hands of French justice is as brief as possible.
This article is a translation of the original in French.
