Russia says Ukraine is using Telegram dating bot for terrorism

Russia has issued an international arrest warrant for Telegram founder Pavel Durov, charging him with facilitating terrorist activities via his platform.

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) claims Telegram failed to remove Telegram channels, chats, and bots “used by Ukrainian special services and by ​terrorist and extremist organisations to prepare and coordinate acts of sabotage and terrorism, mass ​killings, and cyber-fraud operations within the Russian Federation.”

It claims this led to “numerous human casualties” and billions in material damage. 

Ukrainian forces were allegedly using a Telegram dating chatbot to recruit Russians into sabotage work while Russia has detained 46 users for criminal acts connected to the chatbot.  

In response to the warrant, Telegram’s X account posted a photo of Durov with his middle finger pointed towards the camera. 

Read more: Telegram CEO Durov says he was poisoned during TON fund raise

This year, Russia has reportedly fined Telegram 100 million rubles ($1.26 million) for failing to take down content that’s banned in Russia.

In 2024, Durov was arrested in France and charged with allowing criminal activity, such as fraud, child sexual abuse, and money laundering, to proliferate on his app. 

One year later, authorities allowed the dual France/Dubai citizen to fly back to his home in Dubai while they continued to investigate his case.

Durov poisoned during Russia Telegram tensions

Durov claimed to have been previosuly poisoned during the spring of 2018 when he received an unknown package.

He didn’t reveal an exact timeframe of his poisoning, but in April, Telegram refused to give encryption keys to the FSB, which wanted access to messaging data. Later that month, Russia banned Telegram. 

Before this, he’d just secured $1.7 billion in funding from Russian billionaires, as well as other investors, for his TON crypto project.  

In September 2024, Russian president Vladimir Putin criticised Durov’s arrest by France. Putin said, “I know that many countries have raised concerns about the platform being used in certain ways by certain individuals and entities whose activities could harm the economy or security of certain countries. I think the Russian government might also have had some questions.”

Read more: Are Telegram chats actually encrypted?

He added, “All platforms of this kind are guilty of this. If this is what they’re doing to Durov, then others should probably be arrested,” before adding that the French authorities’ actions “are not entirely clear to me, as they are selective.”

Telegram has also been criticised by the UN and senior figures at crypto security firm Elliptic for its role in facilitating scams. 

In 2024, the UN argued that Telegram had become a haven for criminal money launderers while Elliptic’s chief scientist said it was contributing, and not doing enough to stop, the $442 billion scam industry.

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