The founder of Telegram is facing charges of “complicity in terrorism” and an international arrest warrant, at the very moment Moscow is throttling traffic to his app and imposing its own unencrypted messaging service. This sequence of events sheds light, far beyond the Russian case, on the growing pressure from states on the encryption of communications.
A Heavy Indictment, an Empire of Suspicion
The FSB, the Russian security service, has formally indicted Pavel Durov for aiding terrorist activities, a charge under Article 205.1 of the Russian Criminal Code and punishable by up to 15 years in prison. This procedure formalizes a case that Durov himself had revealed as early as February.
According to Russian authorities, the accusation is based on the alleged use by Ukrainian services of a dating bot, Daivinchik/Leo, operating inside Telegram and claiming up to 16 million monthly users. The mechanism described by the Russian Investigative Committee is as follows:
- agents posing as young women made contact with young Russians;
- phishing links suggesting fake hacks of government accounts were sent to the targets;
- the same agents, subsequently presenting themselves as members of Russian law enforcement, pushed the victims to commit arson and assaults against police officers.
Moscow claims that 46 people aged 12 to 22 have been arrested since July 2025 across 16 regions of the country as part of this campaign, according to Reclaim The Net. The FSB has released a video presented as showing several young people confessing to setting fire to gas stations after being recruited by anonymous intermediaries on Telegram.
Durov’s Response: A Middle Finger and an Accusation of Spectacle
Telegram’s reaction was true to form: the company’s X account responded with a photo of Durov giving the middle finger, a picture he had already published in 2011 during his standoff with Mail.ru over control of VKontakte, the social network he founded before Telegram. The post garnered 1.3 million views in a single morning.
As early as February, when the case was first revealed, Durov had denounced it as a political maneuver:
« Every day, the authorities manufacture new pretexts to restrict Russians’ access to Telegram as they seek to suppress the right to privacy and freedom of expression. » — Pavel Durov, quoted by Decrypt
He had described the situation as a “sad spectacle of a state that is afraid of its own people.”
MAX, the Unencrypted Alternative Pushed by the Kremlin
The paradox is stark: at the very moment Moscow accuses Telegram of security laxity, the Russian state is simultaneously organizing the technical throttling of the app and promoting a state-controlled substitute.
According to Roskomnadzor, the Russian communications regulator itself, Telegram’s traffic has been throttled by 55%. At the same time, authorities are steering users toward MAX, a state-built messaging app with no user-to-user encryption, pre-installed on all smartphones sold in Russia since September 2025.
Yet Telegram remains used by nearly 90 million Russians, according to Reclaim The Net—a massive user base that Moscow is clearly trying to push toward a tool it fully controls.
The contrast is striking:
- Telegram: partial encryption, private company, headquartered outside Russia, accused of passive complicity with “enemies” of the state;
- MAX: no user-to-user encryption, mandatory pre-installation, direct state control.
The logic is no longer just about security; it is becoming structural: replacing a communication channel that is difficult to monitor with one that the state can read at will.
A Movement Reaching Beyond Russia
This Russian case should not obscure a broader trend: pressure on communications encryption is also gaining ground in Western democracies. Over the past few years, the United Kingdom and the European Union have repeatedly launched initiatives aimed at establishing access mechanisms for encrypted messages in the name of fighting terrorism or child sexual abuse material—debates that raise the same fundamental question as the Durov affair: can collective security be guaranteed without dissolving the individual confidentiality of communications?
The difference in degree remains real—Russia asserts direct state control via an unencrypted messaging service imposed by default, whereas Western democracies advance through legislative channels and public debate. But the direction of the movement is converging: everywhere, states are seeking to regain control over communication channels they do not fully master.
Durov, an Ambiguous Symbol
Pavel Durov occupies a unique position in this landscape. Portrayed at times as an uncompromising defender of privacy against states, and at others as an entrepreneur who has had to compromise with successive powers—Russia in the past with VKontakte, and now French and Russian authorities over Telegram—he embodies the difficulty for any mass communication platform to maintain a line of pure resistance against state pressure.
His act of public defiance, spectacular as it may be, does nothing to change the reality of the power dynamic: a private company, even one with a global audience, remains at the mercy of the regulatory, technical, and judicial levers of the states in whose territory it operates or whose users it hosts.
A Question Beyond the Telegram Case
The Durov case illustrates, in its most brutal Russian version, a dynamic found in more muted forms even in Western capitals: the temptation for states to replace end-to-end encryption with architectures they can monitor, in the name of security. It remains to be seen whether European democracies will be able to draw a clear line between the necessary fight against the criminal use of messaging apps and the more insidious temptation of generalized surveillance of private communications.
