Telegram founder Pavel Durov urged “Russian brothers and sisters” to return to “digital resistance” in the face of Moscow’s attempts to block the popular messenger.
Durov’s call comes amid mounting reports of outages in the past weeks coming from many corners of the huge country, which has intensified efforts to cut access to the platform.
65 million Russians still use Telegram daily, Durov says
Millions of Russian citizens continue to communicate through Telegram despite their government’s push to prevent them from doing so, the app’s owner unveiled.
Durov made the claim in reaction to the blocking of the messenger over non-compliance with Russia’s rules, mainly over alleged failures to delete information prohibited by local law.
In a post on Saturday, the tech entrepreneur remarked:
“Telegram was banned in Russia — yet 65M Russians still use it daily via VPNs, with 50M+ sending messages every day.”
He also reminded that Russian authorities have been trying to ban VPN (virtual private network) services for years as well.
“Their blocking attempts just triggered a massive banking failure — cash briefly became the only payment method nationwide yesterday,” Durov also revealed.
He likened the recent developments in Russia to Iran’s earlier attempt to ban Telegram and recalled: “The government hoped for mass adoption of its surveillance messaging apps but got mass adoption of VPNs instead.”
According to Pavel Durov, who was born in Russia but is now a French-Emirati citizen, millions of Russians are now joining millions of Iranians in opposing state censorship. He turned to them:
“Welcome back to the Digital Resistance, my Russian brothers and sisters. The entire nation is now mobilized to bypass these absurd restrictions. Thousands are building VPNs and proxies.”
Durov, also the chief executive of the messaging service, vowed that Telegram will keep adapting and making its traffic harder to detect and block.
Russia’s crackdown on Telegram enters new phase
Russian regulators have been accusing Telegram mainly of failure to comply with the country’s requirements regarding content moderation.
The messenger has been fined for such violations, most recently in March, when a Moscow court imposed a hefty financial penalty for not deleting a post allegedly calling for extremism.
Voice calls through the platform had already been limited in August of last year, when the authorities said the app had become a popular tool for fraudsters and cybercriminals.
Russia’s telecom watchdog and media censor, Roskomnadzor (RKN), started slowing down traffic to Telegram in early February.
At the time, Durov accused Moscow of trying to “force its citizens to switch to a state-controlled app built for surveillance and political censorship.”
The app he was apparently referring to is called Max. The government-backed alternative, touted as the “national messenger,” has grown its daily audience to 70 million, according to state media.
Telegram became the most popular messaging app in Russia this past January, when it overtook the already banned WhatsApp, reaching over 95 million users.
The Telegram channel Baza posted in mid-February that the full blocking of the messaging service would begin in early April. Sources quoted later by RBC confirmed the timeframe.
Meanwhile, local authorities in a number of Russian regions and cities have been reportedly foiling protests in defense of Telegram.
Pavel Durov’s messenger is widely used not just by ordinary Russian citizens and businesses, but also by many officials and institutions.
Amid an increasing number of reports of issues with its mobile app and desktop version on platforms such as Detector404.ru and Cбой.рф, the country’s crypto community has been struggling to find a substitute.
Government representatives have previously indicated that Telegram may continue to operate in the Russian Federation if it complies with its legislation.
Russia first tried but failed to block the messenger in 2018, when it refused to provide law enforcement with encryption keys and access to user communications. That ban was eventually lifted two years later.