Pavel Durov has visited Russia more than 50 times since his "exile" in 2014

He was in Russia when he was being sued by the FSB and on the day the Kremlin publicly dropped its claims against Telegram

Pavel Durov, founder and CEO of Telegram, entered Russia more than 50 times between 2015 and 2021, Important Stories found out.

We tracked Durov's movements by analyzing data from the FSB's largest leak, the Kordon Border Guard database. The base appeared online no later than August 20, and on August 26, investigative journalist Andrei Zakharov spoke publicly about it. At the moment, the database is hidden from access.

"Important Stories" ensured the FSB database's reliability by checking the routes by random sampling. Georgy Alburov, an investigator from Navalny's team, also spoke about the successful verification of the database.

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Seven reasons not to leave Russia

In 2014, Pavel Durov said that the FSB demanded that he disclose personal data of communities in which Ukrainians organized protests during Euromaidan. Already in 2024, talking to Tucker Carlson, Durov added that the Kremlin even demanded the removal of Russian opposition groups, and armed law enforcers came to his house with searches.

In April 2014, Durov sold his stake in Vkontakte and left the country saying, "There is no turning back. Especially after I publicly refused to cooperate with the authorities".

In farewell, the visionary published a manifesto "Seven reasons not to return to Russia", criticizing the courts, legislation, education system, as well as tax policy in Russia.

Since then, journalists have only written about one visit by Durov - in the fall of 2014, he came for a few days to sell his data center ICVA Ltd. Already in exile, Pavel, with his brother Nikolai, began their deep work on a new messenger.

"I travel to places I am sure are in line with our values and what we do. I don't visit major geopolitical powers or other countries - like China, Russia, or even the United States," Durov explained his personal security principles in an interview with Carlson.

As the "Important Stories" found out, Durov traveled to Russia multiple times a year from 2015-2017 and 2020-2021. The only exception was the time when the Kremlin declared war on Telegram and unsuccessfully tried to block it.

Durov did not hide his travels - he flew between St. Petersburg and European cities on Aeroflot flights and often traveled to Helsinki on Russian Railways trains.

The billionaire's first visit to St. Petersburg after his "exile" was no earlier than May 2015. The exact date of entry into the Russian Federation is not shown in the leaks from the FSB Border Service. Gaps in border control data can be explained by the fact that the person enters Russia through Belarus, which has no border with the Russian Federation.

From that moment until the end of 2017, the businessman came to Moscow and St. Petersburg at least 41 times. His brother Nikolai, a programmer who created the Telegram messenger, also traveled to Russia from Finland.

Durov's visits to St. Petersburg were earlier hinted at by one of his partners. In early August this year, Forbes was able to document that Irina Bolgar, a resident of Geneva, became the mother of three of Pavel Durov's youngest children. Bolgar also posted photos with Durov from their son's birthday party on social media.

Bolgar said that Durov visited her in St. Petersburg in 2017 when she gave birth to her second child. Officially, the couple did not register the relationship, but the billionaire acknowledged paternity.

Durov's younger children, according to Bolgar, lived with her in Latvia and Switzerland at different times. According to the border service, Durov often traveled between these countries and Russia.

Conflict with the FSB

One day Durov still had to go into exile, but not immediately, and not forever.

In July 2017, the package of laws of Deputy Irina Yarovaya came into force, according to which operators are obliged to hand over to the FSB the decryption keys of users' messages. Durov and his lawyers have repeatedly stated that it is technically impossible to do this - the messenger's architecture does not allow it: keys in secret Telegram chats are generated on users' devices and do not reach the servers.

At this point, the Kremlin launched a repressive campaign against Telegram. Despite the risks, the billionaire spent the rest of 2017 mainly in Russia, traveling to Finland, Latvia, and France for a few days, according to data from the Kordon database.

The FSB demanded the London office of "Telegram" to give the keys to decrypt the chats of the six defendants in the case of the terrorist attack on the St. Petersburg subway in April 2017.

The head of Telegram refused to meet the special services' demands and threatened to stop working in Russia.

"We are not bothered by the fact that in certain countries we are under pressure because we protect user privacy. We are always ready to sever personal and business ties with such countries, depriving them of the opportunity to put such pressure on us," Durov wrote in his channel on September 28, 2017. He added that his company is not represented in Russia in any way.

Durov left St. Petersburg for Helsinki 12 days earlier and made two overnight trips in his Maybach immediately after (October 2 and 4). Both times he crossed the Russian border and returned an hour later.

On October 16, the Meshchansky Court of Moscow fined Telegram a small amount of 800,000 rubles for the company at the suit of the FSB. Durov arrived in St. Petersburg on October 14, and the next morning flew to London but returned three weeks later.

In early December 2017, the billionaire gave an interview to Bloomberg and said that he would now be involved in the blockchain project TON (Telegram Open Network), and on New Year's Day he left his native St. Petersburg by train for Finland and did not return to Russia for another 2.5 years.

Meanwhile, the FSB continued to demand the decryption of the messenger, Roskomnadzor began practicing mass blocking techniques on Telegram, and young Russians with paper airplanes went out to mass protests against blocking and called themselves "Digital Resistance" at Durov's encouragement.

American auditions and return

After the Russian authorities attacked Telegram, Durov settled in Dubai and began extensive work on TON and the Gram cryptocurrency with his brother Nikolai.

In 2018, he raised $1.7 billion in two rounds from more than 170 investors, including Russian billionaires Yuri Milner and Roman Abramovich, former Medvedev minister Mikhail Abyzov (now serving a 12-year sentence in Russia), Said Gutseriev, and major venture capital funds.

TON was scheduled to launch in late October 2019, but the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accused Telegram of trying to sell unregistered securities under the guise of the cryptocurrency Gram. The investigation took several months, and in March 2020 a court in New York blocked the issuance of Gram. Durov appealed, and the litigation dragged on.

In order not to end up in debt, the Russian visionary was forced to put his main brainchild, Telegram, on the line. He offered investors several options: take 72% of the investment now or sign a loan agreement for a year and get 110% already in 2021 at any outcome of the process. In case of losing, Durov wanted to return the money to investors by selling his stake in Telegram. Already in May 2020, Durov announced the closure of the blockchain project.

And on June 4, 2020, the following message appeared in the official channel of Pavel Durov:

Recently, State Duma deputies Fedot Tumusov and Dmitry Ionin proposed unblocking Telegram in Russia. I welcome this initiative. <....> [Unblocking] could have a positive impact on innovative development and national security of the country.

Durov reported that over the years his team has become more effective in removing "extremist propaganda" and promised to support MPs if they want to fight terrorism without violating the right to correspondence secrecy.

That's when Durov arrived in Russia for the first time since December 2017. The date of the border crossing is not shown in the FSB databases, but it is safe to say that Durov was in St. Petersburg on June 18, 2020 - on the evening of that day he boarded a plane from Pulkovo to Belgrade.

On the afternoon of June 18, Roskomnadzor suddenly released a statement about stopping the blocking of the messenger in Russia in coordination with the Prosecutor General's Office: "We positively assess the readiness expressed by the founder of Telegram to counter terrorism and extremism." At the same time, the court did not cancel the blocking decision, and the State Duma did not pass any bills that would have allowed initiating the unblocking of the messenger.

Durov spent the next two days in Belgrade. A Serbian notary read him the settlement agreement between Telegram Group Inc. and the SEC in the TON case, according to court documents reviewed by Important Stories. It is unknown why it was a Serbian notary and exactly in Belgrade.

Under the settlement agreement, Durov, immediately after he visited Russia, pledged to immediately return $1.193 billion to investors, pay another $30.6 million over three years, pay a fine of $18.5 million to the United States, and inform the States of his plans to issue crypto-assets.

Already on June 20, Durov flew back to St. Petersburg and lived between Russia, the UAE, and Europe almost until the full-scale war in Ukraine began.

This period includes the blocking of Navalny's team's Smart Voting telegram bot and other opposition bots ahead of the 2021 State Duma elections.

On October 21, 2021, Durov flew from Pulkovo in St. Petersburg to Ibiza and never came to Russia again. But his assistant, who previously prepared Durov's visits to the country, regularly travels there, according to the FSB database. The same assistant accompanied him on a trip to Azerbaijan before his detention in France, which follows from an analysis of the social networks of this Telegram employee.

"Important Stories" does not know whether Pavel Durov met with Russian authorities during his visits to Moscow and St. Petersburg. Durov's assistant did not respond to our questions on social media or via email. During a phone call, he refused to communicate and hung up.

The editorial staff forwarded the questions to Telegram LLC. We are ready to publish a meaningful response.