The authorities believe that Ukraine has quick access to Russian servicemen’s messages and exploits this for military purposes, which wouldn’t be possible without some degree of complicity on Telegram’s part, thus impugning its founder’s character after he denied working with foreign spooks.
Andrew Korybko
The FSB claimed
to have “reliable information that the Ukrainian armed forces and
intelligence agencies are able to quickly obtain information posted on
the Telegram messenger and use it for military purposes.” This coincides
with the government allegedly throttling Telegram on the grounds that
it’s not in compliance with local laws, which preceded reports
that it’ll be banned on 1 April. The authorities denied that they have
nay such plan but there’s no doubt that Telegram is now controversial in
Russia.
Speculation about Ukraine’s
access to the messages sent by Russian servicemen on that platform,
which the FSB also touched upon in their two-sentence press release, is
credible in light of founder Pavel Durov’s brief detention
by the French authorities in 2024. Although he vehemently denied that
he cut a deal with them for granting their authorities access to certain
users’ messages and has since accused them of asking him to ban conservative Romanian accounts, he might be lying and it could all be an act.
After
all, criticizing the French authorities in the aftermath of his
scandalous detainment could be meant to convince observers that he
didn’t cut a deal with them even though he might have, or he could at
least have been coerced by the American ones to that end or even
voluntarily decided to help the Ukrainian ones. In any case, however it
ended up happening, the FSB arguably does indeed believe that Ukraine
has access to Russian servicemen’s messages and uses them for military
purposes.
It would therefore be best for them to speedily replace
Telegram with Russia’s Max messenger app instead, which was developed
for strengthening Russia’s “digital sovereignty”. That concept refers to
the trend of countries asserting their sovereignty in this sphere
through regulations like banning certain sites like Russia banned
Facebook, Twitter/X, and others for non-compliance with local
legislation and creating their own alternatives that can’t be exploited
by their adversaries. It’s a sensible policy in today’s world.
In
fact, so sensible is it that some cynics speculate that the pressure
that Telegram has recently come under in Russia is part of the state’s
campaign to get citizens to use Max, but that still doesn’t discredit
the FSB’s claim about Ukraine having quick access to Russian
servicemen’s messages. Telegram is used by many of them to communicate
with each other as well as by many Russian businesses to engage with
their clients. It’s also a useful channel for sharing facts about
Russian policy with the rest of the world.
Even in the scenario of
Russia banning Telegram, it could still be used with a VPN just like
Facebook, Twitter/X, and other banned sites are, which the FSB obviously
knows and thus challenges the cynical speculation that it might be
lying about the app as part of a ploy to get Russians to use Max
instead. Accordingly, their claim about it being compromised by Ukraine
is credible, and this in turn impugns Durov’s character since it
wouldn’t be possible without some degree of complicity on his part.
Whatever
Telegram’s fate in Russia may be, Russia and others are correct in
doubting the integrity of that app and all foreign ones in general since
there are credible reasons to believe that they’re exploited by
adversarial intelligence agencies for hostile purposes. The solution is
therefore creating national alternatives and getting citizens to use
them instead for strengthening “digital sovereignty”. Some states might
struggle with this, however, so their citizens would then have to choose
the “lesser (foreign) evil”.