Pavel Durov, the Russian-born founder of Telegram, said Tuesday that Russian authorities were probing him for “aiding terrorism”, the latest escalation in Moscow’s repeated attempts to block the popular messenger.
Moscow has restricted access to both Telegram and WhatsApp, Russia’s two most popular messaging apps, as it tries to shift users onto Max — a state-backed alternative which critics say lacks privacy — but so far without much success.
“Russia has opened a criminal case against me for ‘aiding terrorism’,” Durov, who holds Russian and French citizenship and lives outside Russia, wrote on Telegram.
“Each day, the authorities fabricate new pretexts to restrict Russians’ access to Telegram as they seek to suppress the right to privacy and free speech,” he added.
Russia has been unsuccessfully trying to block Telegram for years and has repeatedly demanded Durov give the FSB security service back-door access to get round its encryption and access user data.
Earlier on Tuesday, some state media outlets published lengthy articles, citing FSB materials, that claimed Durov’s reluctance to cooperate with the authorities had led to deaths as Telegram was allegedly being used to coordinate so-called “terrorist” attacks.
There was no official comment from Russian law enforcement on whether an investigation into Durov was opened.
The Kremlin often uses allegations and charges of “terrorism” or “extremism” to suppress dissent and prosecute critics, a practice that has ramped up amid the Ukraine offensive, which hit the four-year mark on Tuesday.
“We are seeing a large number of violations and the unwillingness of Telegram’s administration to cooperate with our authorities,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Tuesday, without confirming if a probe into Durov had been launched.
As well as being a messenger, Telegram is used widely as the country’s main social media platform.
The Kremlin itself publishes there several times a day and last week Peskov said it would keep its official account.
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