Pavel Durov has publicly responded to the decision of the Russian authorities for the first time. According to the founder of Telegram, the country declared him a "terrorist" precisely for refusing to comply with demands for mass surveillance and censorship on the messenger. The entrepreneur wrote about this in his Telegram channel.
The terrorist Durov drew attention to the wording of the accusation: according to Russian legislation, he is now prohibited from "publishing information on the internet"—this despite the fact that we are talking about the person who created one of the planet's largest messengers. The entrepreneur concluded his statement with a phrase that quickly spread among subscribers: Russian officials "clearly do not understand who can ban whom on the internet."
Earlier, Rosfinmonitoring added Durov to the list of terrorists and extremists. Formally, this entails the freezing of the entrepreneur's accounts and assets in Russia, a ban on most financial transactions, participation in elections, and work with the media. At the same time, the restrictions concern Durov personally, not the legal entity—the company Telegram does not fall under the article.
What Durov Might Have Meant
The phrase about "who can ban whom" does not look like just an emotional remark. Technically, it is the Telegram administration that determines which channels exist on the platform, including the verified accounts of Russian agencies and officials who continue to conduct official communication through the messenger despite its blocking in the country. Such rhetoric indicates the possibility of strict restrictions for state structures. Verified channels of Russian officials and state agencies, which actively use the platform to communicate with the public, could come under attack.
A Similar Story Already Happened—Only with Cars
The situation resembles another story with Russian officials—not about messengers, but about cars. Vladimir Putin stated back in 2023 that all officials and employees of state-owned companies should switch from foreign cars to domestic ones. Two years later, the president himself acknowledged that the order was far from fully implemented—some departments continued to purchase foreign equipment.
A similar scenario is unfolding with messengers, only the implementation speed is higher. The government obligated civil servants and public sector workers to completely switch to the domestic messenger MAX for work communication by 2030, abandoning foreign platforms. At the same time, sources reported that many officials, despite coercion, continue to use the blocked Telegram—they buy separate SIM cards and smartphones, fearing surveillance through MAX.
Parallelly, the number of alternatives for ordinary users is decreasing. At the end of July, the Turkish BiP and South Korean KakaoTalk stopped working without a VPN—both messengers had shown some of the highest growth rates in Russia in recent months precisely as a replacement for the blocked Telegram. No official explanations from Roskomnadzor regarding the outages were received.
The resulting picture is one where citizens are consistently limited in their choice of communication tools and pushed towards a single state platform, while officials themselves continue to use a foreign service, access to which is restricted for others.
Durov has not yet clarified whether he plans to take any action regarding the channels of Russian agencies. His statement remains the first public reaction to the assigned status—the further development of the situation will depend on how the Russian authorities themselves react to it.
AI Opinion
From the perspective of machine data analysis, Durov's current phrase echoes the rhetoric of 2020, when Roskomnadzor itself lifted access restrictions to Telegram, explaining the decision by the founder's willingness to counter terrorism and extremism. The agency then turned a blind eye to its own inconsistency: while the messenger was formally listed as blocked, state channels like RT and Vladimir Solovyov continued to operate in it, and RT's editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan publicly commented on this with the phrase "if you can't block Telegram, don't block it."
Technically, the situation differs from 2020: back then, the state was fighting for access to the service from the outside, while now Durov is talking about control from within—over the same departmental channels that survived the blocking. This connection can now be severed not only by Roskomnadzor but also by the platform itself. Whether this phrase will remain rhetoric or turn into real restrictions for state channels will be seen in the coming weeks.
