Russian television station airs subversive ad supporting Telegram

The Russian television network STS inserted a little subversion into its advertisements over the weekend for Saturday and Sunday broadcasts of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies. The commercials show footage of the 2017 film “Dead Men Tell No Tales,” and the narration loosely describes the plot, but listen carefully and you’ll realize that the ads actually compare Captain Jack Sparrow to Pavel Durov, whose instant messenger Telegram has flouted Russia’s Internet censor for more than two weeks now.

“First, they wanted to take the keys, but he didn’t give them up,” says the narrator at the start of the promo, clearly referring to the Telegram encryption keys demanded by Russia’s Federal Security Service. “And there was a trial, and there was a verdict, but the cunning Sparrow found another way and stole a waggon from under everyone’s nose.” Stealing a wagon is hardly the highlight of “Pirates of the Caribbean” 5, but in Russian the word for “wagon” is “telega,” which has become slang for “Telegram.”