Russia opens criminal investigation into Telegram founder Pavel Durov for ‘facilitating terrorist activity’

The Russian authorities have opened a criminal investigation into Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov for “facilitating terrorist activity” amid the Kremlin’s continued crackdown on foreign-owned messaging services, Russian state-affiliated news outlets reported on Monday.

Citing Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), Kremlin-linked newspapers Komsomolskaya Pravda and Rossiyskaya Gazeta both reported on Monday evening that a criminal case had been opened against Durov in articles attacking him and outlining the “threats” posed by Telegram to Russian society.

Both articles claimed that, since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Telegram had become “the main tool of NATO countries’ intelligence services and the Kiev regime”, while Rossiyskaya Gazeta said the app’s “illusion of anonymity” had made it a home for “radicals, drug addicts, murderers, and terrorists”.

Both also added that the app had been used by the perpetrators of the 2024 terrorist attack on Moscow’s Crocus City Hall, as well as those behind the killings of prominent pro-war figures including Darya Dugina, Vladlen Tatarsky and “nine Russian generals” including General Igor Kirillov.

Rossiyskaya Gazeta also accused Durov of refusing requests from the Russian authorities to ensure that the app complied with Russian law, while simultaneously providing “assistance to foreign government agencies whose actions are directed against the security of our country”.

In a response to the investigation later on Tuesday, Durov took to Telegram to say “each day, the authorities fabricate new pretexts to restrict Russians’ access to Telegram as they seek to suppress the right to privacy and free speech”, adding that it was “a sad spectacle of a state afraid of its own people.”

Earlier this month, Russia’s media regulator Roskomnadzor began limiting Telegram’s functionality in a move that drew rare criticism from supporters of Moscow’s war in Ukraine, who argued that Russian soldiers on the front lines used the app to stay in touch with their families.

Durov, who no longer lives in Russia, said that the measures taken against Telegram were designed to get its Russian users to use MAX, a state-backed messenger and “super app” that critics have warned could record user activity, which could then be made available to the authorities.

“Russia is restricting access to Telegram in an attempt to force its citizens to switch to a state-controlled app built for surveillance and political censorship,” Durov wrote on 10 February.

Reports subsequently emerged that Roskomnadzor had decided to block Telegram in Russia from 1 April, in a ban similar to that already imposed on Instagram and Facebook.

After that decision was revealed, Telegram rubbished claims by the authorities that messages sent on the app could be accessed by foreign intelligence agencies, calling them “deliberate fiction”.