The Russia Report

Issue 216

From the editor

The arrest of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov on his arrival in France from Azerbaijan on Saturday night predictably sparked claims from Russia that the West is “totalitarian” and hates freedom of speech, but the charges against him show that French authorities are serious about taking action against social media platforms that act as havens for organised crime. On Wednesday evening Durov appeared in court in Paris and was released on bail of 5 million euros, banned from leaving France and ordered to report to police twice a week.

Vladimir Soloviev quoted Elon Musk while raging about the arrest of Pavel Durov

The sequence of events stunned not only Russia but also Durov’s fellow tech boss Elon Musk and supporters who worry that EU laws on social media and encrypted messaging services are too invasive. Durov, 39, is charged with being complicit in the enabling of an illicit transaction (penalty up to 10 years in prison and a fine of 500,000 euros), refusing to provide information to authorities on request, being complicit in child porn, fraud and money laundering offences, and failing to meet regulatory requirements for encrypted messaging services.

“I have seen false information regarding France following the arrest of Pavel Durov,” Emmanuel Macron wrote on X on Monday. “France is deeply committed to freedom of expression and communication, to innovation, and to the spirit of entrepreneurship. It will remain so. In a state governed by the rule of law, freedoms are upheld within a legal framework, both on social media and in real life, to protect citizens and respect their fundamental rights. It is up to the judiciary, in full independence, to enforce the law. The arrest of the president of Telegram on French soil took place as part of an ongoing judicial investigation. It is in no way a political decision. It is up to the judges to rule on the matter.”

While Durov claimed to have left Russia in 2014 because of the restrictions on Telegram there, he reportedly made more than 50 trips to his homeland between 2015 and 2021, and his platform was not only unbanned there but also became the main communication channel for the Russian military after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Durov based himself in Dubai and obtained UAE citizenship in 2021, but he was also awarded French citizenship for murky reasons later that year, despite having no obvious ties to France. It is also unclear why he went to France last week, accompanied by Russian “crypto investor” Yulia Vavilova, 24 (who has since vanished), when he probably knew that there was a French arrest warrant out for him and his brother Nikolai. It was rumoured that Durov had been hoping to meet Vladimir Putin during the Russian president’s visit to Baku, but that didn’t happen.

Telegram had refused to join international programmes aimed at detecting and removing online child abuse material or revenge porn, according to the BBC. In June Durov told Tucker Carlson that he only employs “about 30 engineers” to run the platform. Its contact method is via an automated bot. In South Korea recently there has been a surge in sexually explicit deepfake images and videos of women in Telegram chatrooms. The country’s president, Yoon Suk Yeol, has ordered a crackdown on the activities.

Investigative journalist Holger Roonemaa posted on X this week that he received numerous offers to participate in criminal schemes after running an experiment in which he looked for a job in Estonia on Telegram. “We were quickly offered to 1) carry migrants from Belarusian border to Germany, 2) to scam Swiss out of their savings, 3) launder money by allowing unknown people [to] use our bank accounts, 4) different drug related gigs, 5) send a photo of our penis for 2500 USD (we rejected),” he wrote. Roonemaa showed screenshots of his conversations about these “jobs”, which were conducted in Russian.

In an apparent panic, RT boss Margarita Simonyan advised Russians to delete “sensitive” material from Telegram, while Putin’s spokesman Dmitri Peskov attempted to calm nerves and said there was no need to do so. Newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets claimed that Durov might have been arrested so that France could get the keys to Russia’s military communications or simply block Russians from Telegram altogether, complaining, “Let’s imagine Telegram crashes. How will we fight?”

“POV: It’s 2030 in Europe and you’re being executed for liking a meme,” Musk posted on his own platform X in response to Durov’s arrest. Leading Russian propagandist Vladimir Soloviev quoted this with glee, adding, “The French government is ready to accuse [Durov] of everything, from selling drugs to terrorism. But the real reason lies elsewhere. It’s all about the encrypted communications this social media platform uses… I have a simple question: was anyone unaware that all of our military sits on Telegram? Was anyone unaware that our government officials also sit on Telegram?”

If that indeed was a motive then it was a valid and good one, comparable to the Allies cracking Germany’s Enigma machines in World War II. Undoubtedly Durov has plenty of material with which to bargain behind the scenes, but he either faces the prospect of revenge from Russia if he turns against the Kremlin or a potential long prison sentence if he continues to refuse to cooperate with French authorities. Hopefully France will maintain its determination to take this case to the end and we will all learn some very interesting things from it.

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Russia launches deadly strikes across Ukraine

Russia launched a massive wave of missile and drone strikes across Ukraine on Monday, targeting energy infrastructure, killing seven people on the ground and injuring 47 others. Ukraine has already been struggling to keep its power on with some residents and businesses resorting at times to using generators. The latest attack has made the electricity crisis even more acute ahead of winter. A pilot of one of the F-16s that was recently supplied to Ukraine, Lt. Col. Oleksiy “Moonfish” Mes, who took to the skies during the barrage, was killed. Separately a British member of a Reuters news team, safety advisor Ryan Evans, was killed on Saturday when a Russian missile hit the Hotel Sapphire in Kramatorsk where they were staying.

Guards and prisoners killed in Volgograd Oblast hostage-taking

Security forces stormed a prison in Surovikino, Volgograd Oblast on Friday to end a hostage-taking incident by prisoners from Central Asia who claimed to be affiliated to ISIS. The four prisoners from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan killed four guards and sent out videos of others covered in blood begging authorities to meet the hostage-takers’ demands. In the assault on the prison all four of the prisoners were killed. A similar ISIS-inspired hostage-taking occurred at a prison in Rostov-on-Don in June. These come in the wake of the Crocus City Hall attack in Moscow in March in which ISIS terrorists from Tajikistan killed 145 people.

Former deputy defence minister arrested on embezzlement charge

Gen. Pavel Popov, 67, who was deputy defence minister until June when he was replaced by Vladimir Putin’s cousin Anna Tsivileva, has been jailed by a Moscow court to await trial on a charge of embezzling funds intended for construction in the capital’s military-themed Patriot Park. His arrest appears to be part of a wider purge of the Defence Ministry that has involved several other high-ranking officials being jailed and former Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu being replaced by Andrei Belousov in May.

Several sentenced for pro-Ukraine actions

A military court in Rostov-on-Don has sentenced Igor Korchinsky to 18 years in a maximum-security prison for allegedly planning a car bombing of the Russian-installed head of occupied Crimea, Sergei Aksenov, on orders of Ukraine’s security services. Korchinsky was arrested last summer. Russia accused Korchinsky of undergoing training in Zaporizhzhia between December 2022 and April 2023, then going to Crimea to watch Aksenov’s movements, and receiving the coordinates of a hidden explosive device.

Another military court has sentenced 22-year-old Komi resident Nikita Igushev to 15 years in prison for treason and participation in a terrorist organisation for allegedly attempting to join the Freedom of Russia Legion that is fighting for Ukraine. During correspondence with the legion last year they allegedly asked Igushev to prove his loyalty by providing them with information about a communications target in Syktyvkar, which he did. According to prosecutors he made a video of himself swearing an oath of loyalty to the legion in November and travelled to Belgorod in an effort to get to Ukraine with assistance from someone he was supposed to meet there, but he was initially arrested for being drunk in a public place in December.

A court in Gorno-Altaysk has sentenced publisher of the local newspaper Listok Sergei Mikhailov to eight years in prison for “spreading fakes about the army” for allegedly publishing material in the paper and on Telegram about Bucha and Mariupol. Mikhailov had been held in jail since his arrest in April 2022. He pled not guilty and told the court, “The aim of our publications was to show my fellow countrymen the truth and protect them from the lies of government propaganda. The fog of lies is becoming thicker, and I don’t want my readers to be lured by those lies and voluntarily become participants in the combat… I hope our actions resulted in the Altai Republic having fewer zinc coffins. Even one less coffin means these 10 years of work weren’t in vain.”

A court in Odintsovo, Moscow Oblast, has also sentenced dog handler Anastasia Zibrova to five years in prison for “spreading fakes about the army” for a post on VKontakte about Russia’s missile strike on a train station in Kramatorsk in April 2022 that killed 63 people. Zibrova, who has a six-year-old daughter and elderly grandmother at home, said she didn’t know the information was false (which it wasn’t). Her ex-husband is away fighting in Ukraine. Zibrova is also an Interior Ministry combat veteran who has received awards for her service.

A military court in Khabarovsk has sentenced 15-year-old Valery Zaitsev to 4 ½ years in a “rehabilitation colony” on a charge of participating in a terrorist organisation and planning a terrorist attack. Zaitsev was arrested in October last year in a children’s tuberculosis treatment facility in Komsomolsk-on-Amur where he had been for several months. He was accused of supporting Ukraine’s Azov battalion and making a video with other teenagers of himself throwing a Molotov cocktail at an abandoned building. Zaitsev was held in jail until his trial and his teachers visited him so that he was able to continue studying and pass his exams. He had been raised by his grandparents after his father died and his mother lost her parental rights.

Two more violent criminals released to fight in Ukraine

Former Wagner contractor Ivan Rossomakhin, 29, from Kirov Oblast, who was released from prison in 2022 to fight in Ukraine with the mercenary group and sentenced to 23 years in prison on his return for killing an 85-year-old woman, has been released again and sent back to Ukraine. Rossomakhin was sentenced to 14 years in prison for murder and robbery in 2020. In September 2022 he was pardoned by Vladimir Putin. Last year when Rossomakhin came back to his home village from the war local residents complained about his behaviour and police promised to watch him, but he was still able to kill the pensioner.

In Buryatia a swimming coach who repeatedly raped a girl with cerebral palsy during massage sessions and threatened to kill her was charged with lesser offences so that he could be sent to fight in Ukraine. Russia officially does not allow people convicted of paedophilia, terrorism, extremism or treason to be released to join the military.