Pavel Durov added to terrorist list

The Federal Financial Monitoring Service of the Russian Federation (Rosfinmonitoring) has added Telegram founder Pavel Durov to its list of terrorists and extremists. According to TASS, this decision was made against the backdrop of criminal cases initiated against the entrepreneur and the failure to comply with security agency demands, which has drawn the attention of the IT community and the global digital market. This was reported by Ixbt.com reported .

It is reported that criminal charges of facilitating terrorist activities have been brought against Pavel Durov in Russia, and an international search has been initiated. According to the Federal Security Service (FSB), the Telegram administration failed to comply with requests to block groups, channels, and bots used by Ukrainian special services and various extremist organizations to prepare crimes and terrorist attacks on Russian territory.

Statistics and agency demands

According to official agency statistics, more than 153,000 crimes committed using the Telegram messenger have been recorded in Russia since 2022. Roskomnadzor has sent over 150,000 requests to remove prohibited content in connection with these cases, but the majority of them were ignored.

In response to these drastic steps, Pavel Durov stated that official Russian agencies added him to the terrorist list precisely because he refused to comply with demands for mass surveillance and censorship. He emphasized that protecting the privacy and freedom of messenger users remains one of his core principles.

As a reminder, such legal and political controversies surrounding the Telegram platform have been observed several times before. However, the current measures and the launch of the international search could significantly impact the operation of one of the world's most popular messengers and lead to serious legal consequences for its founder.