The arrest in France in 2024 of Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram, was framed from the outset as a debate about freedom of expression, privacy, and digital sovereignty. Durov was portrayed as the harassed libertarian.
But that discussion obscures what is essential. The political turn Durov had taken over the years, to the point of becoming a pawn in the Kremlin’s European strategy, because Telegram functions as a transmission belt for anything that attacks European democracies.
Durov’s arrest produced a strange alliance, to say the least. Those who came to his defense ranged from exiled Russian opposition figures, who still saw him as the libertarian icon of earlier years, to Kremlin propagandists, who saw his current usefulness to their interests. The latter claimed he was nothing more than a poor dupe who had believed that Western liberal democracies were better than the Russian regime.
In both narratives—both false—the democratic state is the absolute enemy and Telegram the last trench of freedom.
But the facts show that this story is false.
Durov clashed with the authorities until 2020. In 2018, for example, the Kremlin ordered telecom operators to block Telegram for refusing to hand over the keys that would allow messages to be decrypted.
But in 2020 the ban was lifted without any apparent reason and the relationship normalized. From that point on, Telegram has been a good boy with the Kremlin. It not only accepted its requests but actively collaborated with its repression.
In 2021 it blocked the “smart voting” bot developed by Alexei Navalny’s circle, who was later assassinated.
Durov’s public discourse also changed. From 2020 onward he focused his criticism on Apple and Google, not on the Russian state. In an interview with the Trump-aligned Tucker Carlson, a Russian propagandist in the United States, he doubled down on that line.
After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, while major U.S. platforms (Meta, Google) limited Russian state propaganda as much as possible, Telegram maintained a useless moderation system.
That vacuum has for four years favored the spread of Russian propaganda and, according to sources at the EEAS (European External Action Service), also military uses on the ground in favor of Russia and against Ukraine.
In addition, Russia helped Telegram by blocking other networks on its territory, such as X. In the European Union, since Telegram is assumed not to reach 45 million active users within the EU, it does not meet the threshold to trigger stricter obligations under the Digital Services Act (DSA), especially regarding moderation and transparency.
At this point, the narrative of “political persecution” in France is a textbook smokescreen. It shifts the focus so that instead of talking about the Russian disinformation flooding its network and supporting the most extreme of Europe’s far right, the discussion becomes a false dilemma between security and freedom.
Durov is not today (and has not been since at least 2020) a libertarian or an anti-system rebel as he tries to present himself. He is an actor functional to the Kremlin’s strategy, amplifying the pro-Russian (and now pro-Trump) European far right, which also uses his case to attack democratic governments that are trying to impose order on platforms that believe themselves above laws and parliaments.
Durov’s attack on the Spanish government, by sending a message to more than two million Spanish mobile phones, should prompt Spain to activate the same mechanisms already in place in France. We are late.
Durov is not going to defend your freedom of expression or your democracy. Durov works in favor of Putin and his European henchmen. Against Europe.