THE BELL WEEKLY: The arrest of Pavel Durov
Hello! This week we bring you an extended look at the arrest of Pavel Durov in France — covering the Telegram founder’s history in Russia, what we know so far about his shock arrest and what it could mean for the platform.
Durov’s French affair
Late Saturday evening at Le Bourget airport near Paris, French authorities arrested Pavel Durov — the founder of Telegram, who achieved fame in the late 2000s as the founder of VKontakte, the Russian version of Facebook. Details remain sketchy, but Durov is accused of refusing to cooperate with French law enforcement in an investigation into the use of the platform by criminals — essentially he appears to be being treated as an accomplice to crimes, including child pornographer and drug dealing, that are plotted, planned and carried out on the messenger. In Russia, the arrest of one of the country’s best-known IT entrepreneurs has been a gift for Russian officials in their war of values with the West.
Durov From nerd to macho
Durov was a striking example of a self-made billionaire in Russia who didn’t accumulate his wealth from natural resources or 90s-era privatization deals. The son of a philology professor, he began his education in Turin, Italy, where his father worked for several years. He later returned to St. Petersburg with his family and won a place at an experimental class in one of Russia’s most prestigious schools. There were seven or eight candidates for every place, but Durov made the cut, his former teacher recalled in a film about him.
At school, Durov took an interest in computer programming but after graduating went to train as an English translator at St. Petersburg State University, one of the best-known higher education outfits in Russia. During his college days he created durov.com, a forum where students chatted and exchanged papers. Later he set up the university’s official online forum. He would often argue with himself under different nicknames, while offline he organized design and beauty contests, Forbes Russia reported.
In his final year of studying, Durov — unwilling to settle into the routine of office life — had realized that translation wasn’t for him. Upon graduating he never even picked up his diploma. By then he had already set his sights on creating a social network where, unlike forums, people registered and communicated under their real names.
One of Durov’s classmates, Vyacheslav Mirilashvili, played a big role in launching VKontakte. He read about the success of Durov’s student forum in a local newspaper and decided to get in touch with the creator. The investment into what would become VKontatke came from Mirilashvili’s grandfather, a famous 90s-era businessman who served eight years on kidnapping and forced entry charges. That record didn’t bother Durov, Forbes claimed.
VKontakte launched in 2006 and quickly attracted several million users. But the project needed to buy servers and hire staff to stay online and continue growing — outlays which required millions of dollars in support. Yuri Milner’s DST Fund, the best-known internet investor of the day, offered a crucial helping hand. Milner admired Durov, considered him a genius and even visited the company’s offices in person, quickly becoming a financial backer. Milner said years later that he was looking for an investment project that resembled Facebook as closely as possible. VKontakte, in addition, was seen as more technologically advanced than its American cousin.
Despite VKontakte regularly being called “Russia’s Facebook” and Durov himself occasionally dubbed “Russia’s Mark Zuckerberg,” Durov was very different from the Facebook founder. As VKontake developed, he tried to ditch any reputation he might have had as a stereotypical tech guy, forging a macho image for himself by befriending “all sorts of strippers and escorts,” a classmate said in a film about him. The idea was more than just self-branding. Durov thought that programmers in Russia were regarded as nerds, and if such “nerds” saw his completely different lifestyle, they would be more likely to want to work for his company.
Durov vs. the FSB
By the early 2010s, VKontakte had become the most popular social network in Russia. It has also started running into serious problems with the authorities. In late 2011 Russia held parliamentary elections in which the ruling United Russia party secured a predictably comfortable victory. Thousands of unhappy Russians took to the streets of downtown Moscow, demanding that the poll be annulled amid allegations of fraud and ballot stuffing. The protests were coordinated on VKontakte.
The FSB, the successor to the Soviet-era KGB, demanded that the social network hand over details of the users who organized those protests. Durov refused. “Our position remains unchanged and boils down to one simple statement: it is pointless to remove from one website what can quickly be found on others,” he wrote in an open letter explaining his decision.
Two years later, the FSB was again pursuing Durov, this time with demands to hand over the details of people who took part in Kyiv’s 2013-14 Maidan protests, the weeks-long street demonstrations that ultimately toppled Ukraine’s pro-Moscow government. Durov again refused. But the pressure had become too much and he was essentially forced to sell his stake in the company and leave Russia in 2014. “Unfortunately, in this country it is currently impossible to run an internet business,” he said at the time.
Ironically, just a month before Durov fled into exile, he had listed seven reasons to stay in Russia on his own VK page, highlighting its “development potential” and “freedom of expression.” “My dream is to overcome our national inferiority complex by proving that products from Russia can be in massive demand throughout the world,” he had said in 2011.
After he sold his stake in VKontakte, Durov poured his energy into Telegram. The first version of the messenger had already appeared in 2013 and it steadily gained in popularity, reaching a monthly audience of 200 million users in March 2018.
Yet again that popularity caused problems with the Russian authorities — with demands for user information once more the source of a stand-off. After a terrorist attack on the Saint Petersburg metro killed 16 people, Russian special services demanded Telegram hand over encryption keys so that they could read users’ messages. Telegram refused. Russia responded by blocking the messenger. But it was hardly a success, with Telegram quickly adapting and being able to redirect traffic to unblocked IP addresses. Officials and high-profile Kremlin supporters even remained active on the platform. After two years of unsuccessful attempts to hobble Telegram, the Russian authorities backed down, with the service promising to actively fight terrorism and extremism.
Even amid the new wartime censorship rules, Russia has not returned to the possibility of blocking Telegram as it has with Western social media sites. It remains freely available and works fine in Russia. Its importance as a platform for Russian officials and pro-war bloggers is hard to overestimate — just as it remains the platform of choice for independent media outlets that have otherwise been outlawed in Russia.
The Paris case
Durov’s arrest at a Paris airport, where he arrived on his private jet, immediately grabbed the headlines. So far there is still little in the way of official information. French prosecutors said his arrest is part of a wider and ongoing investigation into the spread of illicit material and crimes coordinated online. It remains unclear what exact charges Durov himself faces or could face. France’s TF1, which broke the news of his arrest, said the Telegram founder was detained after failing to cooperate with that ongoing investigation — something which could be interpreted as aiding and abetting the string of crimes that are known to be plotted and coordinated through Telegram. French prosecutors say the case involves 12 charges, most related to “complicity” over child pornography and drug dealing.
Amid widespread speculation, including suggestions his arrest was an attack on free speech or politically motivated, French President Emmanuel Macron was forced to wade in on Monday. “The arrest of the president of Telegram on French soil took place as part of an ongoing judicial investigation. It is in no way a political decision. It is up to the judges to rule on the matter,” he said in a statement. Macron added: “France is deeply committed to freedom of expression and communication, to innovation, and to the spirit of entrepreneurship. It will remain so. In a state governed by the rule of law, freedoms are upheld within a legal framework, both on social media and in real life, to protect citizens and respect their fundamental rights.”
If it turns out to be an issue related to content moderation, it will be far from the first such complaint against Durov and Telegram. In 2020, Durov himself testified to a representative from the US Securities and Exchange Commission SEC during an interrogation in Dubai, saying that only 30 people work for Telegram, most of them programmers. The platform had moderation, but it was weak.
Telegram’s approach had been to meet authorities half-way — deleting some channels hosted by terror groups, but often only after they had already committed crimes. Durov appeared to understand that this was a problem for the service. In an FT interview earlier this year — in which the publication called the platform “a hotbed of criminal activity” — he promised to improve the moderation process. But he immediately added that there was no need to restrict people’s freedom to express their thoughts if they “do not cross red lines.”
The messenger’s confidentiality policy states that Telegram is prepared to share users’ IP addresses and phone numbers with authorities only if a court orders it. “So far, this has never happened,” it stated. With rare exceptions, Telegram prefers simply avoiding getting involved with what is happening on its platform. At the same time, nobody can argue that its competitors — with many more employees and a much stronger commitment to the area — have solved the issue of content moderation. For example, Instagram (which is banned in Russia) also faces periodic accusations that it doesn’t do enough to combat crime, even though the platform has a dedicated team to prevent violence and the exploitation of children online.
Russia’s response
Russian officials have rallied to Durov’s side, calling for his release. Deputy Duma speaker Vladislav Davankov urged Russia’s foreign ministry to call on the French authorities to release Durov from custody. He added that there are concerns that the West might now get its hands on the personal information of Telegram users. Senator Andrei Klishas sarcastically noted that in arresting Durov “the French continued their struggle for ‘free speech’ and ‘European values’”. Ombudsman Tatyana Moskalkova wrote that the “true reason for the arrest” was an “attempt to shut down Telegram” where “you can find the truth” about world events. The Kremlin itself has been more restrained. Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday: "We do not yet know what exactly Durov is accused of. We have not yet heard any official statement on the matter, and before we say anything, we should wait for the situation to be clarified.
The reason for his surprise support inside Russia — a country that for years blocked his service and from which he was essentially forced to flee — might be because Durov has never directly criticized the war on Ukraine, unlike other Russian billionaires that now live abroad. Durov, who also has French and St. Kitts & Nevis citizenship, has commented on the war just once, in March 2022, when he called it a “tragic conflict both for me personally, and for Telegram.”
Other well-known IT entrepreneurs with Russian roots also spoke in Durov’s defense. Ethereum developer Vitalik Buterin said that although he was concerned by Telegram’s “non-serious” attitude towards encryption, the charges against Durov, based on the currently available information, “look very bad and worrying for the future of software and communications freedom in Europe.”
Durov even got support from Russian pro-war bloggers, who started writingabout how Telegram is actively used on the front line — by both Russian and Ukrainian forces. Some pro-war Telegram channels started using photo frames with the slogan “Za DuroVa” — a play on a common slogan of support (“Za Durova” means “For Durov”) using the ‘Z’ and ‘V’ letters that have come to symbolize the invasion.
What next?
It’s difficult to assess what real threat Telegram and Durov might be facing until further details of the charges emerge. The key question is what complicity in the alleged crimes would mean from the point of view of French law, noted lawyer Roman Buzko, a partner at law firm Buzko Krasnov which specializes in tech and innovation law. So far, the case could be said to look like trying to prosecute the manufacturer of a kitchen knife after somebody was stabbed to death using one of their blades. It could depend on whether French law enforcement has genuine grounds to suspect Durov of involvement in the crimes committed using Telegram.
It is unlikely that anything negative will happen to Telegram in the immediate future, two sources close to the company told The Bell. However, his arrest raises the question of whether charges could be brought against other senior members of the team and also what might happen to its investors. Over the past few years, Telegram attracted $2.3 billion and the company needs to pay off those investors by March 2026. An initial public offering was being considered — something that would be incredibly problematic, if not impossible, in the event of a serious and potentially lengthy investigation into the platform and/or its senior executives.
Why the world should care
The Durov case has turned into a real gift for Russian propagandists. The detention of a Russian citizen abroad, especially an entrepreneur known globally — and one who has not spoken out against the war in Ukraine — gives officials in Moscow another stick with which to beat the “collective West.” They can argue it shows anybody can end up behind bars for your beliefs. For Moscow, Pavel Durov could become “Julian Assange on steroids” — another high-profile chance to bang on about claims of unfair persecution, hypocrisy and double standards.
