When the founder of Telegram was arrested In France last Saturday, both the Kremlin and its Ministry of Defense and, ultimately, the omnipotent Russian state, panicked and gave an absurd order to their employees: “Delete all chats.” Absurd because it would be as ineffective as pulling out the cables from your computer or turning off your phone: Telegram does not work like that and its users’ data remains stored in the company’s cloud. However, that gesture showed how Russia has left the company in the hands of a enfant terrible, Pavel Durovan extremely sensitive national security issue: its telecommunications, from the front lines to the dark offices of Moscow.
“Pavel Durov has been arrested. This attack on the messaging system on which half of the military operation in Ukraine depends was foreseeable. Couldn’t this have been thought of before?!”, one of the few pro-war Russian correspondents whom Putin receives in his office, Alexander Sladkov, denounced on his own Telegram channel.
“There are a lot of jokes that Pavel Durov’s arrest is equivalent to the arrest of the head of communications for the Russian Armed Forces. Well, a lot of the control of troops depends on Telegram,” Kremlin adviser Alexei Rogozin admitted. “No matter how crazy it may sound: intelligence data, artillery adjustments, video transmissions from helicopters and much more.”
On the other end of the phone, Mikhail Klimariov, director of the Society for the Protection of the Internet, answers Morning Express. “The use of Telegram for military purposes demonstrates a clear lack of professionalism and a failure,” says this Russian telecommunications expert from exile.
“Ukrainians took Signal [otro servicio de mensajería con código abierto] “They turned it around. They took the code and deployed their own servers,” the activist explains. “Russia can do it too, but it will take time. Signal doesn’t work as well as Telegram and they have thousands of people fighting now who need another telecommunications system, but they are used to Telegram,” says Klimariov.
“Most likely, [las Fuerzas Armadas rusas] “They are trying to make the change immediately, but it is clear that Durov’s arrest has weakened the combat effectiveness of the Russian army,” the dissident said. “They are in a difficult situation.”
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Veto until 2020
Telegram was banned in Russia for not cooperating with its security forces until June 18, 2020, the day the Kremlin’s internet censorship agency, Roskomnadzor, unexpectedly lifted its ban on Durov’s platform.
A few weeks later, the entire Kremlin state network replaced its communications with software Western social networks such as WhatsApp and Skype were replaced by Telegram. It was a sweeping order that affected both the presidential administration’s agencies and the television channels through which Putin broadcasts his propaganda abroad, this newspaper has been able to confirm.
Margarita Simonian, director of one of these media outlets, Russia Today, asked everyone to delete their Telegram messages as soon as the arrest became known and referred to a myth about the platform: “Dúrov was detained to take the keys [de los chats]”, Simonián posted on his Telegram channel.
In reality, there is no such thing as a “universal key” that allows third parties to read all messages at their discretion, as encryption keys are created between users at the time of sending. The Russian Federal Security Service demanded these supposed keys from Durov in 2018. The owner of Telegram responded with a letter that included giant iron keys.
The real problem, however, is with Telegram’s servers spread across its data centres around the world. “We don’t know how Telegram actually works. There is a risk that it could access some correspondence or stored files. Telegram was sold as a cloud messenger where data can be stored for quite a long time,” says Klimariov.
It was never known whether there was any kind of agreement with the government in 2020, just as the launch of Durov’s cryptocurrency, TON, in the US failed, but there are several indications. Despite its supposed policy of neutrality towards the content of its users, Telegram deleted a bot from the team of the dissident Alexei Navalny in 2021, Smart Votewhich recommended to Russians, constituency by constituency, which alternative candidate they should vote for in order to beat Putin’s party, United Russia, in the general elections of that year. The party that suffered the most from the censure was the Communist Party, although it remained loyal to Putin and did not protest.
Another indication was the deletion this year of opposition Telegram channels in the Bashkortostan region during the Protests over the imprisonment of an environmentalist dissident.
Despite this, Durov tries to maintain his independence with lax restraint from its platform. “The state requires you to live by its laws, but each state has its own ideas about what illegal content is,” journalist Andrei Zakharov stresses on his Telegram channel.
Telegram was targeted in a Russian blocking attempt earlier this month, and the Kremlin has mandated that all channels with more than 10,000 subscribers must register. Some prominent figures from the Ukraine war, such as Major Alexander Khodakovsky — who has more than half a million subscribers — have announced they will no longer be blogging.
The big lie
The crux of the matter is to what extent Putin and Durov have collaborated. “There is no turning back, especially after I publicly refused to cooperate with the authorities.” [rusas]”The entrepreneur said in his supposed farewell to his homeland in 2014. The businessman left after refusing to hand over to the Kremlin the data he had on VK (his version of Facebook, then sold to Putin’s entourage) of the Ukrainians who participated in the Maidan protests.
A decade later, the businessman once again boasted of being an alleged adversary of the state: “I travel to places that I believe are in line with our values. I do not visit the great geopolitical powers or other countries like China, Russia or even the United States,” Durov told ultra-American presenter Tucker Carlson in April of this year.
But Durov has been lying all along. A massive leak of a database from the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB, successor to the KGB) has revealed that the owner of Telegram travelled to Russia more than 50 times between 2015 and 2017, and once on 18 June 2021, the day the Kremlin lifted its crackdown on the platform.
No media outlet has been able to confirm whether any kind of engagement with the Kremlin was established after these trips. “It is a very bad sign,” says Klimariov.[Telegram] “The Russian authorities were blocked and Durov appeared in Russia calmly, even though he might have been afraid of being arrested. This is a very bad sign that there was some kind of negotiation,” explains the activist from exile.
Klimariov has been on the Russian authorities’ wanted list since 2022. “As soon as I cross the border, I will be put in jail. And although it is a little different now, it turns out that Durov could do it. And not only could he, but he did it. Nobody put him in jail. Of course, questions arise,” he concludes.
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