Russia has charged Telegram founder Pavel Durov with facilitating terrorist activity in the country and put him on an international wanted list, alleging that his hugely popular messaging app was being used by Ukrainian spies to organize attacks inside Russia.
The charges, announced by the Federal Security Service (FSB), followed a long investigation into Telegram.
The FSB accused Telegram of failing to remove “numerous channels, chats and bots” allegedly used by “Ukrainian intelligence agencies, terrorist and extremist organizations to prepare and coordinate acts of sabotage and terrorism, mass murder, and cyberfraud” in Russia, which resulted in “numerous human casualties.”
It further said that a chatbot available on Telegram called “Daivinchik/Leo” had been used by Ukrainian spies to recruit young Russians to carry out sabotage and terrorist operations.
Reportedly, Ukrainian special agents pose as young women on the app to recruit Russian men and use them for spying or carrying out sabotage activities.
Russia has also issued an international arrest warrant against Durov, who was born in Russia but currently lives in Dubai.
Notably, the Telegram app, which is hugely popular in Russia, is already heavily restricted in Russia.
Russian citizens can now access Telegram only by using a VPN to encrypt their traffic and conceal their location. However, despite these restrictions, state bodies, including the Kremlin and the defense ministry, continue to post on it regularly.
The crackdown on Telegram is part of Russia’s broader effort to restrict access to foreign tech platforms and assert control over the internet. Apart from Telegram, other popular messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, Signal, Discord, Snapchat, and Apple FaceTime are also banned in Russia.
Russia has now gone one step ahead and formally charged Telegram founder Durov with aiding terrorism, despite the fact that the app is hugely popular in Russia.
However, notwithstanding Russian restrictions on Telegram and the charging of its founder with terrorism, both Russia and Ukraine have used the app extensively in the ongoing war.
In fact, the Telegram app has also been described as a “virtual battlefield” in the war between Russia and Ukraine, where it is used by officials, soldiers, defense ministry handles, and influential bloggers on both sides.
So, how did a messaging app become key to the Russia-Ukraine War?
Telegram As A “Virtual Battlefield” in the Russia-Ukraine War
In the Soviet Union, media was heavily controlled by the state to control public discourse.
Russia inherited this culture of controlling the narrative through its influence on the media. However, with the proliferation of digital and social media, the state’s ability to control the media weakened.
Telegram was one of the most popular messaging apps in Russia and Ukraine in 2022 when the war began.
In Russia, Ukraine, and many Eastern European countries, Telegram served as a crucial alternative to state-monitored communication channels for sharing news.
With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Facebook and Instagram were banned over extremism charges by a Moscow court, and access to Twitter was restricted by the Russian censorship body Roskomnadzor.
As there was disdain for traditional state-controlled media in Russia and many other social media channels were banned outright, the role of Telegram, already hugely popular in Russia, in shaping narratives and controlling perceptions of the war became even more critical.
According to a Levada survey, among Russian youth aged 18-24, TV was the least popular news source, with 41% relying on Telegram channels for news. Additionally, during the first two months of the conflict, 76.6% of Ukrainians used social media for news, with Telegram as the most favored platform at 65.7%.
Telegram was also used by both the Russian and Ukrainian governments to broadcast air raid warnings and distribute maps of local bomb shelters.
Some of Telegram’s unique features, such as the ability to make a channel public or private, the option to have unlimited subscribers, and the lack of algorithms that boost or restrict content visibility, have made Telegram a popular information-dissemination tool for both pro- and anti-war voices.
According to a research paper titled ‘Telegram as a Battlefield,’ over 40% of Telegram channels are dedicated to news, with approximately 17% directly related to the war and ongoing events in Ukraine.
As the war progressed, many war bloggers who were not part of traditional media outlets began posting on Telegram, reaching millions of people.
For millions of people, these war bloggers became an alternative source of information and war updates, often coming straight from the front lines.
Given its popularity as a source of information for war updates, many pro-government channels also used Telegram to push their narrative and spread disinformation.
The paper ‘Telegram as a Battlefield’ also found that after the invasion, average views per post for Pro-Kremlin channels rose from 15,929 to 67,442 (a 323% increase) and for Anti-Kremlin channels from 25,346 to 104,778 (313% increase), highlighting how Telegram emerged as a critical battlefield for disseminating information, propaganda, and shaping narratives.
However, it noted that anti-Kremlin channels consistently garnered higher viewership than pro-Kremlin channels, especially post-invasion.
Also, as the war progressed, Ukraine, just like in the case of drone technology, used Telegram in more innovative ways than Russian government circles.
Ukrainians used it for air-raid alerts, bomb-shelter maps, and official updates from President Zelensky and military commands.
Ukraine also used Telegram as an intelligence-collecting tool. It crowdsourced intelligence via tip bots and channels that shared enemy vehicle movements, leading to successful strikes.
Common people in Ukrainian villages often shared information on Russian military movements with the Ukrainian military and intelligence securely via Telegram.
Telegram, in fact, became a vast depository of HUMINT (human intelligence) for Ukraine.
Furthermore, the platform was also used by Russian government critics to share information with the Ukrainian military across the border.
Telegram was also used to document war crimes and OSINT (open source intelligence).
Ukrainian intelligence also used Telegram to communicate with people in occupied territories and to encourage them to share intelligence on the Russian military.
Frontline troops also use the app to organize logistics, share drone feeds, and have informal discussions with their military commands.
Telegram has also been described as the conflict’s digital battle space, where organizing logistics, war blogging from the frontlines, propaganda, disinformation campaigns, narrative warfare, intelligence collection, recruitment of spies and saboteurs, cataloging of war crimes, and dissemination of public interest information like air raid warnings and bomb shelter maps all take place in real time.
Telegram, in fact, is providing the most unfiltered view of the war.
“Telegram has become this really key battleground in the information war,” Dr. Ian Garner, a historian and translator of Russian war propaganda, told Time magazine. “And it’s interesting that this information war has been outsourced to a private company.”
While Russia has often tried to use Telegram to its advantage, Ukraine has shown much more ingenuity in using it, which explains Moscow’s love-hate relationship with the app.
Russia might have restricted the app and now formally charged its founder with terrorism, but official Russian media handles are still using it, and even common Russian citizens can use it using VPN services.
However, even after these formal charges, Telegram will continue to remain the digital battle space of the Russia-Ukraine War.
- Sumit Ahlawat has over a decade of experience in news media. He has worked with Press Trust of India, Times Now, Zee News, Economic Times, and Microsoft News. He holds a Master’s Degree in International Media and Modern History from the University of Sheffield, UK.
- He can be reached at ahlawat.sumit85 (at) gmail.com
