Kremlin hits out at French ‘double standards’ as Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested in Paris

The billionaire is reported to have been held for allegedly failing to adequately moderate the mainly Russian-language messaging platform

The Kremlin has accused France of free speech “double standards” after it arrested the Russian billionaire founder of the Telegram media app.
French anti-fraud officers arrested Pavel Durov on Saturday night after he flew into Paris’s Bourget Airport from Azerbaijan on his private jet.
No official reason has been given for his arrest although French media said it was linked to Telegram, the unfiltered and predominantly Russian-language social messaging platform used as the main conduit for news and videos on the war in Ukraine.
Although Mr Durov was forced to flee Russia 10 years ago after refusing to hand over data on pro-Ukraine protesters to the FSB security services, the Kremlin still accused France of double standards towards Telegram content and freedom of speech.
“Do you think this time they will appeal to Paris and demand Durov’s release, or will they swallow their tongues?” said Maria Zakharova, the Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman.
French television channels TF1 and BFM quoted sources saying that the investigation was focused on “a lack of moderators” on Telegram that allowed “criminal activity”.
Neither Mr Durov nor Telegram have commented.
Telegram’s corporate website says free speech is at the core of its mission and that it has “played a prominent role in pro-democracy movements around the world, including in Iran, Russia, Belarus, Myanmar and Hong Kong”.
It is unclear why Mr Durov had been visiting Azerbaijan. Vladimir Putin also visited the country for a meeting with Ilham Aliyev, its president, this week. Mr Durov has previously denied that he retains any links to the Kremlin.
Telegram has around one billion registered users and is ranked as one of the biggest social media platforms after Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok and WeChat. It is particularly influential in the Russian-speaking world.
Kremlin propagandists and Western free speech advocates lined up to criticise Mr Durov’s arrest.
“Russian army troops actively use Telegram in battles,” said Sergey Markov, a former Kremlin speech writer. “Therefore, Durov’s arrest is possibly an attempt by the French and Nato special services to establish control over the Russian army’s communications and control system in the North-East Military District.”
Elon Musk, owner of the X social media platform, used the hashtag #FreePavel to retweet posts criticising the arrest and said that Europe was becoming a continent of authoritarian states.
“It’s 2030 in Europe and you’re being executed for liking a meme,” he wrote.
Mr Durov, 39, is part of a generation of Russian tech wizards who helped turn Moscow into an IT hotspot to rival Silicon Valley.
He set up Telegram in 2013 with his brother but left Russia a year later after refusing to comply with a Kremlin order to hand over data on opposition groups on VKontakte, a social media website modelled on Facebook that Mr Durov also founded.
After leaving Russia, Mr Durov sold VKontakte, which has become a Kremlin-monitored social media network.
Since then Mr Durov has lived in Dubai. He also has citizenship of France and St Kitts and Nevis, a tax haven often used by wealthy Russians to shift money.
On Telegram, Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, said Mr Durov wanted to be a “brilliant man of the world” but had “miscalculated” by leaving Russia and trusting the West.
“For all our common enemies now, he is Russian and therefore unpredictable and dangerous,” he said. “Durov should finally realise that one cannot choose one’s fatherland.”
Mr Durov, whose fortune is estimated at £11.8 billion, is a vocal proponent of free speech and tech innovation and had praised Mr Musk’s controversial 2022 takeover of Twitter, rebranded as X.
In an interview with the American broadcaster Tucker Carlson in April, Mr Durov said that he has come under pressure from various governments to reign in Telegram’s unwieldy content but that this went against his instincts and he prefers a hands-off approach to moderating.
“I would rather be free than take orders from anyone,” he said, although he has previously bowed to pressure to take Islamic State and far-Right content off Telegram.
Telegram is renowned for its unfiltered content, including graphic videos of missile strikes and gun battles from the war in Ukraine that would be banned from mainstream media as being too gory.
It is also one of the only accessible channels for Russians to access information and news relatively free from the heavily censored and slanted propaganda broadcasts pumped out by Kremlin-controlled mainstream media.
Analysts have described Telegram as a virtual propaganda battleground between Ukraine and Russia. The Kremlin, Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, and various other high-profile Russians and Ukrainians regularly broadcast through the app.
According to the BakuPost website, Mr Durov flew to Baku from Kazakhstan on Aug 17 for meetings with businessmen.
Putin arrived in Baku the following day for his first visit to Azerbaijan since 2018 for meetings with President Ilham Aliyev. Observers speculated that Putin may also have met with Mr Durov.
Sergey Markov, a former Kremlin scriptwriter, said last Monday that Putin and Mr Durov may have an “accidental meeting”. The Baza Telegram channel, which is linked to Russian security forces, wrote last Tuesday that Putin had refused a meeting with Mr Durov. “The reason is not clear,” it said.