Moscow charges Telegram founder Durov with aiding terrorism
Russian authorities have charged Telegram founder Pavel Durov with aiding terrorism, escalating a domestic digital crackdown that overlaps with European accusations that Moscow weaponizes the messaging app for sabotage.
Russia’s Federal Security Service has charged Pavel Durov with aiding terrorism and added the Telegram founder to international wanted lists. The 41-year-old billionaire, who holds French and United Arab Emirates citizenship, faces a potential life sentence if convicted.
The FSB accused Telegram of failing to remove "numerous channels, chats and bots" allegedly used by Ukrainian intelligence and extremist groups. The agency claimed Kyiv used a dating chatbot on the platform to recruit Russians aged 12 to 22 for "sabotage and terrorist activities," stating it had detained 46 users for arson and assaulting law enforcement officers over the past year.
For European investors and regulators, the charges underscore the immense geopolitical risk surrounding the Dubai-based app, which boasts more than 1 billion users. Durov is already under formal investigation in France after his arrest in Paris in 2024. French prosecutors confirmed to the Associated Press on Wednesday that he still faces an array of potential charges, including allegations of allowing drug trafficking and the distribution of child sexual abuse images on his platform.
The legal pressure from Moscow marks a sharp reversal from the Kremlin's previous stance. When French authorities detained Durov last year, Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, defended him by saying: "yes, indeed, terrorists use Telegram. But terrorists also use cars. Why aren’t they arresting the CEO of Renault or Citroën?" Peskov did not respond to requests for comment on the current charges.
While Russia moves to restrict Telegram domestically, European security agencies suspect Moscow of actively exploiting the app’s networks to orchestrate attacks across the continent. Russian military intelligence allegedly used Telegram to recruit a British man to set fire to a London warehouse holding satellite equipment for Ukraine, and Dutch teenagers were arrested in September after Russian hackers contacted them on the app to map wifi networks in The Hague. The city hosts the International Criminal Court, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, and Europol, though Moscow denies involvement in European sabotage.
Inside Russia, the charges are the latest step in a sweeping effort to force citizens onto state-controlled infrastructure. Authorities have banned Facebook, Instagram and X, throttled YouTube, and blocked Signal and Viber. They are now promoting a state messaging app called Max, which lacks end-to-end encryption and openly shares user data with authorities.
However, the crackdown creates a stark contradiction for the Russian state. Military bloggers have protested the restrictions, arguing Telegram is an indispensable tool for troops in Ukraine, but Vladimir Putin recently agreed with a servicewoman who called the platform an "adversarial tool." The president stated that "the use of communications systems that are not ours, not under our control, poses a danger to personnel" in battle, even as the Kremlin’s own Telegram channel maintained more than 284,000 followers as of Wednesday.
