How messaging app Telegram became the heart of the brutal war in Ukraine

A staunch libertarian, Durov has built a brand around challenging the authoritarian state and its president, Vladimir Putin. He's lived in exile in countries like the United Arab Emirates, France, and Italy since 2014, and his anti-censorship politics have made him an icon among Russian activists. In 2018, when Russia blocked Telegram in the country, protesters picketed with signs depicting Durov as a Catholic saint, and activists would make the pilgrimage to St. Petersburg to take selfies with a mural of his face. 

Durov, who shares personal details over social media but rarely in the press, seems to take pleasure in his role as Putin's provocateur. In one photo posted on his Instagram page, he poses toned and topless by a pool in Bali, Indonesia. The caption reads: "If you're Russian, you have to join #PutinShirtlessChallenge."

Since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbor on February 24, Telegram has become a digital battleground where both sides of the conflict can distribute information and propaganda to users around the world.

But as Russian disinformation proliferates on the platform, Durov has found himself caught between his two strongest ideals: On one hand, the staunch cyberlibertarian dream of an open and unmoderated internet, on the other, his deep animosity toward the Russian state and its objectives.

Telegram is at the heart of the war's information battleground 

Telegram's strong user base in Eastern Europe has primed the app to play a key role in the conflict. With millions of users in Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, it is one of the most downloaded apps in the region. As the conflict boiled over, it became a central part of the information space around the fighting.

As Russian forces poured into Ukraine last month, the country made an unprecedented request for computer-savvy citizens to join a volunteer corps of hackers to defend their nation. It put out the call on Telegram.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian government and its leader, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, have been quick to use the app to push out a steady stream of political messaging. 

The president's official handle routinely posts candid videos of Zelenskyy addressing the people of Ukraine, while users claiming to be Ukrainian fighters upload pictures of destroyed Russian military equipment and videos of captured Russian soldiers recanting their support for the invasion and Putin. (The latter, The Washington Post reported, may violate the Geneva Conventions.) Earlier this week, the country's military also said it successfully destroyed a Russian convoy heading for Kyiv thanks to a Telegram tip. 

The lack of consistent access to the internet and electricity in the besieged nation has also made the app a source of news, particularly among displaced Ukrainians who can't access conventional print and broadcast news. 

"People are copying and pasting entire articles to Telegram so that they don't have to use bandwidth to go to a second link, for instance,"

People are copying and pasting entire articles to Telegram so that they don't have to use bandwidth to go to a second link

Joan Donovan, the research director at Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy, told Insider.

But the app's traditionally laissez-faire attitude toward content moderation, which has allowed anti-vaccine views, extremism, and conspiracy theories to proliferate on the platform, has also made it a hotbed for conflict-zone misinformation.

"The chances that our present-day convictions will remain relevant by 2121 are slim," Durov said in a July post defending the app's relaxed attitude toward content moderation. "Such instances make combating fake news and misinformation particularly challenging."

In a marked departure from his previous position, Durov announced late last month that the app may soon block misinformation from the Russian government to prevent it from spreading propaganda. Minutes later, he walked back the announcement. Then, early this month, as the fighting in Ukraine intensified, Telegram announced that it would block the Russian government-controlled media outlet RT.

That made the app's crucial role in the conflict Durov's most substantive challenge to Putin yet, at the expense of some of his longest-held beliefs.

Durov has a long history of battling the Kremlin

This isn't the first time Durov has found himself on the wrong side of the Kremlin. 

In 2012, while Durov was the CEO of VKontakte, a popular Russian social-media platform he founded with his brother Nikolai, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Moscow to protest Putin's government.

It didn't take long for the Russian government to see that VKontakte had become an essential tool for activists organizing protests. When the government asked Durov to censor protesters on the platform, he steadfastly refused. 

The next year, when protests erupted in Ukraine against the government's decision to distance itself from the European Union in favor of closer ties to Russia, known as the "Euromaidan" protests, the platform again became the backbone for activists organizing demonstrations.

VKontakte had become the most popular social-media platform in both Russia and Ukraine, drawing more than 30 million daily unique users. While the platform's popularity made the Durov brothers rich, it transformed Paval Durov into a cult revolutionary and an icon for internet freedom and cyberlibertarianism. 

But by the end of 2013, the attention had become a liability. In December that year, Russia's Federal Security Service demanded that VK turn over the personal data of people who had organized Euromaidan groups. Durov refused. A few months later, he was kicked out of his company and fled Russia for the West Indies island of St. Kitts and Nevis. He later obtained citizenship on the island by investing $250,000 into the country's Sugar Industry Diversification Foundation, Russian press reported at the time. His brother left the country soon after.

"Since December 2013, I have no property, but I still have something more important — a clear conscience and ideals that I am ready to defend," Durov wrote in April 2014 in a famous post on VK rebuffing authorities. He illustrated the post with an image of a dog in a hoodie.

The brothers then turned their full attention to Telegram, which they founded in August 2013. While the app makes no revenue, and is funded through the Durov's personal wealth, it soon became the latest vehicle for his antiauthoritarianism. 

They say on Telegram's FAQ web page that "Nikolai's input is technological," while Pavel "supports Telegram financially and ideologically."

The conflict has put Durov's libertarian values to the test

Even as Durov's libertarian values have been put to test by international groups calling on Telegram to remove terrorist groups like ISIS, as well as hate speech and misinformation, he has resisted the pressure to moderate the platform. It wasn't until this year's Russian invasion of Ukraine that Durov showed signs that he might be more flexible on the issue.

Despite these recent moves, experts think Telegram's current approach is benefiting Ukraine. 

"A lot of people expected the Russians to very much dominate the information space, in terms of whether you're talking about cyberactivities or information operations. And they've not nearly had the dominance that I think a lot of people anticipated," Michael Daniel, the head of the Cyber Threat Alliance and a former special assistant to President Barack Obama, said. "Certainly, the Ukrainians themselves have proven to be quite adept at using the information space."

The Ukrainian government's prolific use of the platform may also have an unintended consequence. According to Donovan of the Shorenstein Center, the steady stream of captured Russian soldiers, defiant Ukrainian politicians, Ukrainian farmers co-opting Russian tanks, and ordinary people preparing to defend themselves can also generate a sense of complacency among non-Ukrainians about the state of the conflict.

"There are many Ukrainians across the world that are cheering on and raising up their country and their homeland," Donovan said. "But it can give this false impression that they're not suffering."

There are many Ukrainians across the world that are cheering on and raising up their country and their homeland," Donovan said. "But it can give this false impression that they're not suffering.

As intermittent telecom blackouts and electrical outages have made Telegram an essential part of Ukraine's informational infrastructure, it is often a double-edged sword for those using it.

At the same time, while rampant misinformation on the platform has created a digital fog of war that can hamper those on the ground, not all experts are convinced that moderating Telegram will be fully positive.

"It helps people spread a huge amount of evidence of war crimes that are happening," Aliaksandr Herasimenka, a researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute, told Insider. 

Herasimenka said a stronger content-moderation policy might force the app to remove evidence of crimes by state and nonstate actors, which would make it harder for authorities to investigate or hold perpetrators to account. 

For Durov, the stakes of Telegram's role in the war are clear.

"I urge users from Russia and Ukraine to be suspicious of any data that is distributed in Telegram at this time," Durov wrote in a plea to users on his Russian-language page last month. "We do not want Telegram to be used as a tool that aggravates conflicts and incites ethnic hatred."