The arrest in France of the Franco-Russian boss of Telegram, Pavel Durov, has shone an unusual spotlight on the encrypted messaging service, a tool of Russian propaganda but also of the Kremlin’s army, as the war against Ukraine drags into its third year.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Telegram (900 million active users) has become the preferred platform for Russian pro-war bloggers to justify the operation and spread their disinformation.
In Ukraine, even President Volodymyr Zelensky publishes his nightly message there every day.
Experts point out that due to the lack of modern tools, Russian troops also used encrypted messaging for battlefield operations, from transferring intelligence to correcting artillery strikes and guiding Iskander missiles.
And Moscow now fears that Durov will give the French the key to decrypting the messaging.
Russian bloggers, some of whom have tens of thousands of subscribers, “are terrified,” says Moscow propaganda expert Ivan Filippov, noting that Western intelligence access to the messaging service would be “an absolute disaster” for them.
On Tuesday, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov noted the “very serious accusations” against the Franco-Russian, referring to a possible “attempt at intimidation.”
The 39-year-old billionaire is a self-proclaimed libertarian, a champion of Internet privacy but controversial for his refusal to allow any moderation on the messaging service he co-founded. Moscow tried to block it in 2018, before giving up.
For blogger Andrei Medvedev, Telegram has now become the “main messenger” of the Russian invasion, an “alternative to classified military communications.”
According to Alexei Rogozin, head of the Center for the Development of Transport Technologies in Moscow, some commentators even make fun of the “arrest of the head of communications of the Russian armed forces.”
“The transfer of intelligence, self-correction of artillery, images of helicopters and many other things are often broadcast via Telegram,” adds the son of the sulphurous Dmitry Rogozin, former head of the Russian space agency.
“Stuck in the past”
Russian units have operated command and control systems, “but they are not performing well on the front lines,” said Mykhailo Samus, director of the New Geopolitics Research Network, a Kiev-based think tank. “The Russian military is stuck in the past.”
Ukraine, he adds, relies on the Delta system developed in cooperation with NATO and praised by kyiv’s allies.
While Durov’s custody, extended until Wednesday, is not expected to have a direct or immediate impact on the conflict, it could force Moscow to find an alternative to Telegram.
Andrei Medvedev considers it “difficult to predict how long Telegram will remain as we know it, or whether such a messenger will continue to exist.”
In any case, the case weighs well beyond the battlefield. The head of public television RT, Margarita Simonyan, has urged the Russians to delete their sensitive messages. The French arrested the businessman to obtain the decryption keys, she assures. “And he will give them to them.”
Complicity in organized crime
The French courts are criticising Pavel Durov for his inaction against the criminal use of his email.
This includes, among other things, the refusal to communicate information necessary for interceptions authorized by law, complicity in organized crimes and offences on the platform (drugs, child pornography, fraud and money laundering by organized gangs) and the provision of cryptology services without a proper declaration.
His detention has divided the Russian opposition, some of which accuse France of violating freedom of expression.
But Bulgarian journalist Christo Grozev, who has investigated Russian intelligence, claims that the internal security services (FSB) and military intelligence (GRU) used Telegram to prepare “terrorist acts” and recruit henchmen.
“France has no reason to treat him differently than anyone else who runs a platform selling drugs or child pornography,” he said. “This has nothing to do with freedom of expression.”
The Free Russia forum of opposition figure and former chess champion Garry Kasparov notes that Durov has — willingly or not — allowed Telegram to become a “weapon of war.”
“No matter how the French Durov saga ends, we hope that Telegram will cease to be a tool for Putin’s war”