Russia issues an international arrest warrant for Pavel Durov

Russia has charged Pavel Durov, 41, founder and CEO of Telegram, with aiding and abetting terrorism and has issued an international arrest warrant against him. A statement from the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), released by national news agencies, states that the messaging app has been repeatedly used by Ukrainian spies to organise acts of sabotage. Durov responded to Moscow’s announcement by posting a photo on Telegram’s X account in which he is giving the middle finger. 

The arrest warrant focuses on the dating bot ‘Daivinchik/Leo’, which is being exploited by the Ukrainian secret services to train young Russians ‘in terrorist and sabotage activities’. In 2025, 46 Russian citizens aged between 12 and 22 were arrested for assaulting a public official and sabotaging energy and transport infrastructure. All had been contacted via the chatbot by Ukrainian agents operating under false pretences.

Durov had been under investigation since February, when Roskomnadzor (the body that regulates communications in Russia) accused Telegram of breaching state laws and announced the gradual introduction of restrictions on the service. Numerous users were already reporting interruptions and slowdowns in the app’s performance at the time, but the Russian government had denied any involvement.

The Telegram founder’s friction with Moscow is nothing new: in 2006, Durov and his brother Nikolai founded the social network VKontakte, known as the ‘Russian Facebook’, which soon became a driving force for internal dissent and a tool for organising protests. This use of the platform led the Russian authorities to exert significant economic and legal pressure on the two brothers, who found themselves forced to sell their shares and leave the country. Following the launch of Telegram in 2013, the FSB repeatedly demanded that the founders hand over sensitive data, even resorting to sanctions and a temporary block on the app. Durov has not returned to Russia: he now lives mainly in Dubai, where he has also relocated his company’s headquarters, and holds Russian, French, United Arab Emirates and Saint Kitts and Nevis citizenship.

Although a VPN is required to access it, Telegram currently remains the main information platform in the Russian-speaking world, a role it has consolidated since the start of the invasion of Ukraine. It is used by the opposition and independent journalists, but also by the presidential administration, government ministries, war correspondents and propagandists. The service currently has around 50 million Russian-speaking users, including the highest echelons of the state. In this regard, Giovanni Savino, a lecturer in contemporary history at the University of Naples Federico II, highlights an apparent contradiction in the criminalisation of a service that the authorities themselves use. In his view, Moscow’s retaliation against Durov could be indicative of an internal power struggle within the Russian state apparatus over control of data, information flows and the national digital ecosystem. It is not yet clear from this internal division whether the ultimate aim is to ban Telegram, gain greater access to data, promote the state-run app Max – the ‘national’ messenger controlled by the Russian security services – or simply to exert negotiating pressure on the digital entrepreneur. Savino also points out that the very same bot used to plan terrorist acts (Daivinchik) is active on VK and even on Max. If the problem were truly the service’s dangerous nature, logic would dictate action across all platforms where it operates, not just on Telegram.