Telegram co-founder and CEO Pavel Durov’s arrest in France last weekend as part of an investigation into his platform’s alleged facilitation of crimes like child pornography and drug trafficking has prompted a global outcry against the EU’s hypocritical crackdown on free speech. He’s since been released on bail, but the exact circumstances of his arrest still remain murky. What’s known for sure though is that he was arrested upon landing in Paris, either to refuel, dine with a lady friend, or have dinner with Macron.
In any case, Durov’s naivete was his Achilles’ heel since he never imagined that he’d be detained on any pretext – let alone by his naturalized country of France (he’s a citizen of multiple states) – due to his immense wealth. He also believed that the era of states was inevitably ending and would be replaced by an era where companies such as his command more power than many states. Despite knowing that Telegram was being investigated by the EU, he still didn’t fear going there.
Another factor that influenced his thinking was the celebrity status that he obtained in the West for infamously defying his native Russia’s reported request over a decade ago to hand over information about some users who were allegedly engaged in terrorist activity upon a court order. As a transnational socialite whose encrypted platform played a key role in organizing Color Revolutions across the world, Durov truly felt that he was too valuable to the West to detain, let alone prosecute.
Whatever problems their governments may have with his platform could presumably be addressed through some sort of deal, including bribery but ideally without handing over users’ information per his principled opposition to this, or so he might have thought in accordance with his worldview. What Durov never considered was that the West’s lack of control over Telegram, unlike Facebook and the former Twitter (and to an extent with X due to its compliance with most legal requests), made him their enemy.
The same New Cold War bloc that he’d thrown his weight behind out of misguided ideological zeal is the one that ultimately ended up persecuting him, not Russia despite his prior fears of that scenario. Not only must this have been a deep personal shock for Durov, but it shattered any pretense of political consistency by the EU, which previously condemned Belarus for jailing some of its citizens due to their anti-state posts on Telegram. President Alexander Lukashenko predictably spoke up after Durov’s arrest.
According to him, “We saw how France… and I do not blame them – they are doing the right thing. Durov or not Durov, if you are guilty, you should be made to answer…(but) why should you make claims against us [Belarus] when we defend ourselves using the same methods as you do?” He has a valid point regardless of however one might feel about Durov’s arrest since the expression of state sovereignty – no matter one’s views about the form that it takes like in this case – is a reality of International Relations.
The difference between Belarus (and other non-Western states with their own national forms of democracy) and the West is that the first explicitly restricts the expression of free speech for national security reasons (irrespective of one’s opinion about this) while the second still pretends not to. As the saying goes, “the devil that you know is better than the one that you don’t know”, meaning that it’s better to be aware of legal limits to free speech and stay out of jail than to be unaware and jailed.
Durov’s naivete about the West’s perceived “virtuousness” vis-à-vis Russia directly resulted in his arrest since he’d have never set foot in the EU again had he sobered up from his ideological delusions and realized that he’d become this New Cold War bloc’s enemy due to their lack of control over Telegram. In particular, it’s done wonders for exposing Western-backed Ukrainian and Israeli war crimes as well as serving as one of the Alt-Media Community’s (AMC) preferred platforms, ergo why he became targeted.
It would have been better for Durov if he had faith that his homeland’s security services and judicial system wouldn’t abuse anti-terrorist pretexts for persecuting peaceful dissidents instead of distrusting them and abandoning Russia for the West (among the other places that he’s lived). At the end of the day, “digital sovereignty” is another reality of International Relations, and messaging platforms that don’t comply with national legislation (regardless of one’s opinion about it) risk prosecution.
Their owners therefore have to “pick their poison” with regards to which countries’ laws they choose to abide by in this respect, obviously choosing what they consider to be the “lesser evil”, which is wherever they decide to permanently reside. Durov considered Russia to be the “greater evil”, yet it turned out that it was the West this entire time, though they didn’t have a reason to crack down on him until recently when Telegram became integral to exposing Western-backed war crimes and aiding the AMC.
Once his platform’s popularity began to explode in the West and turn against its elites’ interests, just like how it initially was used against those non-Western countries’ where it was instrumental in organizing Color Revolutions, he should have known that he’d be targeted with the full weight of the law. Once again, everything comes back to Durov’s naivete and his unrealistic worldview, which was decisively discredited by the West after that that New Cold War bloc just discredited itself as well with his arrest.
