"You can't just turn it off." Is Telegram in danger after Pavel Durov's arrest?
Telegram and VKontakte founder Pavel Durov has visited the Russian Federation more than 50 times since leaving Russia in 2014. This was discovered by Important Stories, which studied the FSB database of Russian border crossings that leaked online.
Detention of Pavel Durov in France
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In 2014, Durov sold his stake in VKontakte (the businessman later hinted that he had done so under duress) and left the country, declaring: “There is no way back. Especially after I publicly refused to cooperate with the authorities.” He also published a manifesto, “Seven Reasons Not to Return to Russia,” in which he criticized the country’s system of power.
However, no later than May 2015, the businessman returned to St. Petersburg for the first time, and over the next two years he visited Russia at least 41 more times. These trips continued after the "Yarovaya package" came into force in the summer of 2017, according to which messengers were required to hand over the encryption keys of users' messages to the FSB.
Durov publicly refused to cooperate with the authorities, after which the Kremlin launched a large-scale propaganda campaign against Telegram. Despite this, the businessman spent most of the autumn of 2017 in Russia, writes Vazhnye Istorii. He left the country for the last time at the end of December 2017 — by that time, the court had already managed to fine the messenger 800 thousand rubles for refusing to comply with one of the FSB's requests. In March 2018, Roskomnadzor began blocking Telegram in Russia.
The next time Durov visited Russia was in early summer 2020. Important Stories points out that this happened shortly after a US court blocked the planned release of the Gram cryptocurrency.
On June 4, 2020, Durov wrote that he welcomed the idea previously expressed in the State Duma to stop blocking Telegram in Russia, noting that unblocking could "have a positive impact on the innovative development and national security of the country." He said that the messenger's administration had become more effective in removing "extremist propaganda" and promised to support the authorities if they wanted to fight terrorism without violating the right to privacy of correspondence.
On June 18, 2020, Roskomnadzor announced that it was ending the blocking of the messenger, noting in an official statement "the expressed readiness of the Telegram founder to counter terrorism and extremism." That evening, Durov flew abroad from St. Petersburg. Over the next year and a half, he repeatedly visited Russia again, the last time in October 2021. "Important Stories" draws attention to the fact that this period coincided with the blocking of Alexei Navalny's "Smart Voting" Telegram bot and other opposition bots before the State Duma elections, which took place in September 2021.
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