French President Emmanuel Macron said on August 26 that the arrest of Pavel Durov, the Russian-born co-founder and CEO of the Telegram messaging app, was not political.
“The arrest of the president of Telegram on French soil took place as part of an ongoing judicial investigation,” Macron said on X. "It is up to the judges to rule on the matter."
Durov was detained at the Bourget airport outside Paris on August 24 and was still being held for questioning on August 26. Telegram issued a statement on X on August 25 saying that Durov “has nothing to hide” and that Telegram is “awaiting a prompt resolution of this situation."
French media reported that France's OFMIN, an office tasked with preventing violence against minors, had issued an arrest warrant for Durov in a preliminary investigation into alleged offenses, including fraud, drug trafficking, cyberbullying, organized crime, and the promotion of terrorism.
“At the heart of this issue is the lack of moderation and cooperation of the platform (which has nearly 1 billion users), particularly in the fight against pedophilia,” Jean-Michel Bernigaud, the head of OFMIN, confirmed in a LinkedIn post.
Dubai-based Telegram boasts more than 900 million users worldwide. In his first major interview in seven years, which he gave to U.S. conservative media figure Tucker Carlson on April 17, Durov vowed that Telegram aims to be a "neutral platform" and not a "player in geopolitics."
Critics in Ukraine, however, say it spreads misinformation and facilitates illegal actions. Some accuse Telegram of having ties to the Russian state and of contributing to its war effort.
Despite its critics, there is “no such decision [to close Telegram] being prepared by the National Security and Defense Council,” according to Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, a Ukrainian lawmaker from the opposition Holos party and the chairman of the Committee on Freedom of Speech in Ukraine's parliament.
Yurchyshyn told RFE/RL that Ukraine plans to monitor the situation for now and added that the blocking of Telegram in Ukraine is still possible.
“We understand that the French are considering accusations of promoting terrorism, and this has greatly worried the Russian authorities because communication [on Telegram] is not only about military operations in Ukraine,” Yurchyshyn said.
He noted that communications about the Wagner Group’s special operations in the Central African Republic or other African countries in which France has influence have also taken place on Telegram.
“That is, most likely, the French special services receive additional information that may be of interest to our special services,” he said.
Access to Telegram was temporarily restricted by Russia in 2018. The decision was made after the messaging app allegedly refused to provide Russia's FSB security agency with encryption keys from users' correspondence, citing the secrecy of correspondence guaranteed by the Russian Constitution.
The decision to block was sharply criticized by many Russian public figures, as well as critics of the Russian government. A mass rally in defense of Telegram was held in Moscow, where then-opposition leader Aleksei Navalny spoke.
However, independent Russian media reports indicated that Telegram reached a compromise with the authorities and has been sharing some data with the security services for several years, although that has been denied by Telegram.
