The founder of Telegram gave a speech remotely at the Oslo Freedom Forum conference in Norway, where he publicly responded to accusations of ties to Russian intelligence services.
The founder of Telegram gave a speech remotely at the Oslo Freedom Forum conference in Norway, where he publicly responded to accusations of ties to Russian intelligence services.
This happened when he answered a semi-joking question from Oslo Freedom Forum founder Thor Halvorssen, which drew laughter from the audience.
— Are you a Russian asset? — Halvorssen asked.
— I am Russian, but I would rather die than become someone’s asset. People who say that know very little about my life — Durov replied.
In 2023, Yaroslav Azhnyuk, co-founder of the Ukrainian IT company Petcube, launched the Kremlingram.org project, whose team investigates Telegram’s ties to the Kremlin based on open data.
Telegram responded to this initiative and calls to restrict the messenger in Ukraine. A representative of the service noted that Azhnyuk mistakenly calls Telegram founder Pavel Durov a «Russian entrepreneur» and that in fact he «was persecuted in Russia for defending the right of Ukrainian users to freedom of speech and was forced to emigrate.»
In 2024, Durov published a large post on his channel dedicated to the Ukrainian language. According to him, he has been interested in it since adolescence, and his mother’s family is from Ukraine.
In a comment to dev.ua, a Telegram representative noted that those who call Pavel Russian are «misleading» because he permanently resides in Dubai and has dual French and Emirati citizenship.
