"A sad sight": Telegram founder reacted to criminal case in Russia

Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram, has reacted to the information that a criminal case has been opened against him in Russia on charges of "promoting terrorism."

"Every day the authorities invent new pretexts to restrict Russians' access to Telegram, seeking to suppress the right to privacy and freedom of speech," Durov wrote in his Telegram channel. - A state that fears its own people is a sad sight.

On January 24, Russian media, in particular, Rossiyskaya Gaz eta and Komsomolskaya Pravda, citing the Russian Federal Security Service, reported that "the actions of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov" were being investigated by the country's law enforcement agencies "as part of a criminal case on the grounds of a crime under Part 1.1 of Article 205.1 (facilitation of terrorist activity) of the Russian Criminal Code". An article in Rossiyskaya Gazeta noted that since 2022, the number of crimes using Telegram has exceeded 153,000.

Since the summer of 2025, the Russian authorities began "slowing down" Telegram: the messenger's speed became insufficient for making calls in Russia. On February 10, Roskomnadzor began a new wave of restrictions: domestic users had problems with media file transfers and access to the messenger's functionality. The agency attributed this to "non-compliance with Russian law.

The founder of Telegram was considering an IPO of the company in 2024, but these plans were postponed due to his prosecution in France, the Financial Times wrote on January 6. Telegram's revenue continues to grow, unaudited financial reports reviewed by the newspaper show. According to the documents, in the first half of 2025, Telegram's revenue grew by more than 65% year-on-year to $870 million. At the same time, the messenger's revenue from advertising in this period grew by 5% to $125 million, from premium subscriptions - by 88% to $223 million. Telegram told bondholders that it plans to receive $2 billion in revenue by the end of 2025, a source told the FT in early January.

Despite an operating profit of almost $400 million, in the first half of 2025, Telegram recorded a net loss of $222 million against a profit of $334 million a year earlier. According to the publication's interlocutor, this was due to the need to write down the value of the messenger's assets in the Toncoin token, the price of which fell in 2025 amid a general decline in the cryptocurrency market.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor