Russia’s FSB has charged Telegram founder Pavel Durov with facilitating terrorist activities and placed him on an international wanted list, the latest escalation in Moscow’s campaign to bring the platform under state control.
What Happened
Russia’s Federal Security Service formally opened a criminal investigation into Pavel Durov, the billionaire founder of Telegram, on charges of abetting terrorist activities. The charge falls under Article 205.1 of the Russian Criminal Code and carries a maximum prison sentence of 15 years.
The FSB simultaneously placed Durov on an international wanted list, stating it is investigating activities related to the involvement of citizens in sabotage using Telegram. The Ukrainian special services allegedly used a Telegram bot to recruit young people and incite them to illegal actions, with 46 people between the ages of 12 and 22 detained across Russia since July 2025.
Why Did the FSB Charge Durov
The FSB’s case against Durov rests on Telegram’s refusal to cooperate with Russian state demands. According to Rossiyskaya Gazeta, citing FSB materials, since 2022 more than 153,000 crimes have been committed using Telegram, including 33,000 related to sabotage, terrorism, and extremism. The FSB claims 475 terrorist attacks were prevented that had been organized through the platform. Russia’s communications regulator Roskomnadzor sent more than 150,000 content removal requests to Durov’s team, all of which were ignored.
The FSB also claims that intelligence agencies from NATO countries and Ukraine are using Telegram as a tool of hybrid warfare against Russia, including for organizing political unrest and acts of terrorism and sabotage, and that Telegram has refused to provide encryption keys that would allow it to access messages sent by suspected criminals. Behind the legal framing lies a simpler commercial and political reality.
Russia has been pushing tens of millions of its citizens toward MAX, a state-built messaging app with no end-to-end encryption and legally required integration with FSB surveillance infrastructure, which has been pre-installed on every smartphone sold in Russia since September 2025. Telegram, used by more than 90 million Russians every month, is the target.
Previous Arrests and Legal Cases
This is not the first time Durov has faced serious legal pressure over Telegram’s content moderation. In August 2024, Durov was arrested at Paris Le Bourget Airport and indicted on twelve charges, including complicity in child sexual exploitation and drug trafficking on Telegram due to insufficient moderation. He was placed under judicial supervision and banned from leaving France. While the French investigation focused on failure to moderate child sexual abuse material and fraudulent transactions, the Russian case is framed entirely through the lens of national security and counter-terrorism.
Durov’s history with Russian authorities goes back even further. In 2014, he left Russia after refusing to comply with demands to remove pages of opposition groups on the social media network VKontakte, which he had founded in 2006.
What Durov Has Said
Durov has consistently denied wrongdoing and has accused Moscow of using the case as leverage to push Russian users toward MAX, a state backed messaging app that critics say lacks the privacy protections Telegram offers.
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