The political message launched by Pavel Durov in his first public comment after his arrest in France is more than a caress for Vladimir Putin.
«We are ready to leave this country (France, ed.)»says Durov – writing of course on his Telegram channel, in complete freedom and without any censorship of his free speech – and announces Telegram’s willingness to leave France. Music to the ears of the Kremlin. Durov calls Paris’s statements “a surprise”, since the French authorities had access to a “direct line” that he himself helped to create («Some time ago, when they asked me, I personally helped them create a hotline with Telegram to fight the threat of terrorism in France») and could have contacted Telegram’s representative in the EU at any time. He denies that the app is an «anarchist paradise», «we have deleted millions of harmful posts and channels every day». And he says that Telegram respects the laws, that the company has a representative in the European Union who responds to requests.
“If a country is dissatisfied with an Internet service, the established practice is to take legal action against the service itself. Using pre-smartphone laws to accuse a CEO of crimes committed by third parties on the platform he runs is the wrong approach.”
It should be remembered that the young Russian, raised in Turin by an intellectual family well-established in the official world of culture at the end of the Soviet Union, He was arrested on July 25 in France as part of an investigation into crimes related to child pornography, drug trafficking, fraudulent transactions associated with the app. But above all, most likely, because of the suspicions of investigators for his refusal to cooperate with the French with the encryption keys of Telegram.
Liberation he wrote that “Dourov boasted to investigators that he had benefited from the protection of the Head of State, then from that of the DGSI” (the French internal services), and then revealed that Durov had a channel of communication not only with the DGSI (the internal services) in recent years, but also with the DGSE (the foreign services), who also recently visited him in Dubai. And, as is well known, foreign services do not deal with child pornography, usually. They deal with foreign interference, wars, sabotage abroad.
The most interesting part is undoubtedly the not veiled threat to leave France (which will de facto sound extremely welcome to Moscow), but also the elusiveness with which Durov talks about his relations with the Kremlin. “Sometimes,” he warns, “we cannot agree with a country’s regulator on the balance between privacy and security. In such cases, we are ready to leave this country. We have done it many times.” But the story of his relationship with Russia is very omitted.: «When Russia asked us to hand over the “encryption keys” to enable surveillance, we refused and Telegram was banned in Russia». This is true, it happened in 2018, and was widely trumpeted by Durov, by many of his supporters, and by a lot of propaganda (including, singularly, by Russian state channels). But it is only partially true: in 2020 Durov returned to Russia, Putin’s ban on Telegram not only fell, but Moscow helped Telegram to finance itself, and on March 23, 2021, even the Russian Investment Fund, tightly controlled by Putin, announced that it had invested in Telegram. (bye bye to Durov’s once independent chat system).
“When Iran asked us to block the channels of peaceful protesters, we refused and Telegram was banned in Iran. We are ready,” Durov thunders, “to leave the markets that are incompatible with our principles, because we do not do it for money reasons.” Durov has said several times, including recently, that he no longer even goes to Russia. But he lied, repeatedly: in recent weeks IStories discovered that Durov has been to Russia 50 times from 2015 to 2021. And not infrequently, when he went, it happened in the days immediately after that some financially favorable event occurred, Telegram financed itself, or paid off debts.
Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said in recent days: “As far as I know, Putin and Durov have never met.” But yesterday Putin himself, speaking publicly at the forum in the Far East, said: “I met Durov in Moscow many years ago, he told me about his plans, we have not seen each other since then, we have not met in Baku.” First admission, who knows what else will come.
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