The arrest of CEO and co-founder of Telegram, Pavel Durov, has sent waves of panic and concern across Russia, from online war commentators all the way up to the corridors of the Kremlin itself.

“They practically detained the head of communications of the Russian army”, one Russian pro-war military blogger said in a post on Telegram, reports Kyiv Independent.

Durov, who was detained at Le Bourget airport outside Paris on August 24, after landing with his private jet, was charged by the French court on August 28 with complicity in the distribution of child pornography and other crimes, such as drug trafficking, through the messaging app he created.

In a statement on August 25, Telegram said that it was “absurd to claim that a platform or its owner is responsible for abuse of that platform”.

And the fact that the CEO of a tech company on which the Russian military heavily relies on in terms of communication is now awaiting trial in Paris, doesn’t suit the Kremlin and those who support it.

According to the independent Russian media outlet Meduza, most divisions of the Russian army use Telegram to discuss logistical needs, even though its use on the front lines is less common due to lack of sufficient internet coverage.

Ukrainian MP Mykola Kniazhytskyi claims that even the coordination of mass Russian missile attacks and the recruitment of the saboteurs in Ukraine is carried out on Telegram.

In a post on the app, one of the top propagandists of the Kremlin, Margarita Simonyan, expressed the main fear – Durov may provide access to Western authorities to data from the platform.

“Durov has been shut down to get the keys. And he’s going to give them”, Simonyan said. “Everyone who is used to using the platform for sensitive conversations should delete those conversations right now and not do it again”.

The Russian Telegram channel Baza on August 25 reported that a similar order had been issued by the Kremlin.

“Such an order came to employees of a number of law enforcement agencies, as well as officials of the presidential administration and the Russian government”, is said in the statement.

In addition, according to sources, the highest ranks of the Russian Ministry of Defense, as well as some businessmen, also received such instructions.

Certainly, fueling this concern among the Russians is the belief that Durov’s arrest has less to do with drug trafficking and child pornography and is more a shadowy effort by Western countries to infiltrate the communications of the highest levels of the Russian military and government.

“(Durov’s) arrest may have political grounds and be a tool for gaining access to the personal information of Telegram users”, the Deputy Speaker of the Russian Duma Vladislav Davankov said on August 25.

“This cannot be allowed. If the French authorities refuse to release Pavel Durov from custody, I propose making every effort to move him to the UAE or the Russian Federation. With his consent, of course”, Davankov added.

French President Emmanuel Macron on August 26 insisted that Durov’s arrest was “in no way a political decision”.

He said now there is “false information regarding France” circulating following the arrest of Durov, adding:

“France is deeply committed to freedom of expression and communication, to innovation, and to the spirit of entrepreneurship. It will remain so”.

Nevertheless, although suspicions of a larger Western conspiracy may be unfounded, Durov’s arrest has raised legitimate criticism regarding the use of the app by the Russian military instead of developing its own communications system.

“It is a pity that after two years of war, there is nothing that can replace Telegram in terms of troop communication”, a Russian military blogger complained.

One of the most popular Russian milbloggers, Rybar, said that it would be “very sad and at the same time funny” if Durov’s arrest was the catalyst for change, instead of “the problems of a purely military nature that had accumulated over two years”.

And according to another, Russian technicians have been working on an alternative, but the army has “not shown any real interest” in rolling it out.

In Ukraine, the charges against Durov have once again ignited public debate about Telegram’s security. Some activists and officials have been alerting for a long time about the fact that while the country is surviving a full-scale invasion by Russia, its most popular messaging app and source of news is a platform founded and run by a Russian.

Telegram’s popularity in Ukraine skyrocketed after the start of the invasion in 2022 – especially due to its anonymous channels that are massively spreading (dis)information to subscribers while preserving full anonymity of the publisher.

In North Macedonia, Durov’s arrest has caused a kind of online hysteria on the social networks accompanied with posts that propagate the Russian narrative that the charges against Durov are an attempt by the West to censor and limit freedom of speech.

His arrest is compared to Orwell’s 1984, to the agony of Assange and Snowden, and to the silencing of the “plethora of activists and journalists” where professor and Levica presidential candidate Biljana Vankovska  lists controversial figures, close to the Kremlin policy that spread Russian propaganda narratives and disinformation, Tucker Carlson and Scott Ritter, even to Socrates, whom they executed for freedom of thought and the “corruption of youth”, concluding in the end that what we are experiencing now is unprecedented. The West is sinking – led by the United States and Great Britain.

Speaking is becoming more dangerous than walking on a minefield, concludes the presidential candidate of the Levica party, in the spirit of the biggest Russian propagandist Margarita Simonyan, forgetting at the same time, she and the rest of the defenders of the character and works of the Telegram CEO, to reflect on freedom of speech in Putin’s Russia and on how many victims, and literally, have fallen for having dared to express an opinion contrary to the policy of the Kremlin.

Dragan Mishev

Translated by: N. Cvetkovska

This article first appeared on CivilMedia on Sept. 2, 2024 in Macedonian (LINK)