Ukraine studies vetoing Telegram to avoid Russian interference and propaganda

72% of Ukrainians use Telegram as their main information channel. For 75% it is their first communication tool, including hundreds of thousands of military personnel in the Ukrainian Armed Forces or the president himself, Volodymyr Zelensky. This is data provided in 2023 by the consulting firm Media Detector and used by the promoters of a legal norm that wants to put limits on the use of this application. The Ukrainian parliament, the Rada, has been studying since last week a bill that threatens to close Telegram. The measure, very unpopular, but supported by deputies from four groups in the Chamber, is based on the hypothesis that the Russian Security Services (the FSB) have access to information about its users and also on the fact that Citizens can consult the invader's media and Russian propaganda accounts.

“As expected, there is a public smear campaign against the authors of the bill,” lamented MP Mikola Kniazhytskyi, from the European Solidarity party, the main opposition force, on Espreso TV on March 27. Several representatives of Servant of the People, Zelensky's party, which has an absolute majority in the Rada, also sign the proposal. Citizens can now consult Telegram without limits, unlike if they browse the Internet or if they follow communication companies regulated by the Ukrainian media law. Any organization accused of spreading propaganda promoting the Russian invasion can be prosecuted. The pages registered in Russia are blocked in Ukraine, but not only these: as EL PAÍS has been able to verify, at least a 2022 Amnesty International reportwhich was harshly criticized by the Ukrainian authorities, cannot be consulted online from Ukraine.

The bill, dubbed in the media as “the law to block Telegram,” requires changes for the companies that own these communication applications. Kniazhytskyi asks that Telegram act like Facebook or YouTube: if there is content that is reported as violent, or users who are reported for distributing false information, they must be removed. The Security Services of Ukraine (SSU) has already asked Telegram to take action against 26 users with hundreds of thousands of followers who justify the Russian invasion.

If these applications serve as an information channel, according to the bill, they must be subject to the media regulation law and the penal code; These companies, according to the draft regulations, must have a fixed representation in Ukraine and must declare who their shareholders are and where they are domiciled. If a shareholder is a Russian resident, the application would not be able to operate in Ukraine. This last measure is mainly aimed at Telegram: its founder, Pável Dúrov, is Russian, although a citizen of the Arab Emirates and resident in Dubai.

Yaroslav Yurchishin, chairman of the Rada's freedom of expression committee and sponsor of the law, is convinced that Durov remains a Russian citizen and has some agreement with the Kremlin. “Probably, there is some control over Telegram on the Russian side, there is no guarantee that user information will not go to the Russian secret services,” Yurchishin said this Monday on RBC media. The law does not facilitate a decision as forceful and complex as completely closing access to Telegram, Yurchisin said, but it is on the table if it is confirmed to be a threat to national security.

The head of the Intelligence Services of the Ministry of Defense (the GUR), Kirilo Budanov, supported in a speech on March 27 that Telegram is indeed a threat to Ukraine: “Telegram is undoubtedly a problem for national security. I am totally against the suppression of free speech, but this is too much. In our country, anyone can create a channel, write whatever they want, but if measures are taken against them, they hide behind the freedom of information of the media. But this is not freedom of information for the media.” Budanov admitted that Telegram also had a positive side, and that is that with it his fellow citizens in the territories occupied by Russia can also freely obtain information.

Oleksii Danilov, until last week secretary of the National Security Council, the body that is monitoring Telegram, already pointed out last November where the shots could go. Danilov assured that Russia can have access to 99% of the accounts on this network. The Ukrainian authorities do not take into account that Durov, the founder of Telegram, lives outside Russia due to pressure from Vladimir Putin to control its content: they question his true independence from the Kremlin.

The Spanish case

Yurchishin stated on RBC that the possible closure of TikTok in the United States by the legislative branch is a model to follow, as it is a Chinese company that could violate national security. The deputy also confirmed that they closely followed the order – suspended due to the complexity of the operation – issued on March 22 by the judge of the National Court Santiago Pedraz to provisionally block Telegram in Spain due to a complaint about the violation of copyright rights. author of several televisions.

Banning Telegram in Ukraine would mean a drastic change in the country's communication model. Not only because it is the channel most used by citizens, also because all public administrations, political and military, report their decisions and relevant issues on their Telegram channels, from Zelensky's daily messages to alerts from the Air Forces of the arrival of Russian missiles. Deputies in favor of limiting Telegram have reiterated that public organizations could be forced to stop operating with this application.

For war analysts, both from Ukrainian and Western institutes, Telegram is also essential because it contains the main accounts of information not controlled by the Kremlin about the military situation on the Russian side. For citizens it is also a way to access entertainment audiovisual content in Russian that cannot be consulted from Ukraine by browsing the Internet. An example of this was the success of the Russian television series Slovo Patsanawhich was the most viewed in Ukraine in 2023, despite being banned, and which thousands of people downloaded piratedly on Telegram channels.

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