Putin, Lavrov puzzled by Telegram CEO's French affair

Russian President Vladimir Putin said during his speech at the Eaatern Economic Forum that he thought that Telegram CEO Pavel Durov lived in Moscow. According to Putin, their only meeting took place many years ago, when Durov talked about his business development plans.

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"I met with Mr. Durov once in Moscow many years ago, he simply talked about plans — I meet with business people regularly. So he was also at one of those meetings in the Kremlin, I don't remember when, but many years ago," Putin said.

Putin emphasized that he did not maintain contacts with Durov nor did he meet with him in Baku, Azerbaijan, in August:

"He could meet me in Moscow, if he wanted to," Putin noted.

Russian Foreign Ministry works on Durov's case

Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that the Russian authorities contacted the lawyers of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov after his arrest in Paris. Durov's lawyers promised to take Moscow's assistance proposals into account, but they showed no response afterwards, Lavrov said in an interview with RBC TV channel at the Eastern Economic Forum.

After it became known that Pavel Durov was arrested in France, the Russian Foreign Ministry sent an official note to the French Foreign Ministry requesting more information and consular access.

"We continue to work to obtain most detailed and understandable information, but they proceed from the fact that since [Durov] has French citizenship and was detained on French territory, then French law should apply in the first place. His French citizenship takes precedence in this case," Sergei Lavrov said.

According to Lavrov, his French colleagues insisted that there was no politics involved in his case as French President Emmanuel Macron stated, "but it is very hard to believe that.” The West traditionally follows the "line to seize any more or less popular and significant information resources," Lavrov said.

Despite the Paris Charter for a New Europe and many other documents devoted to universal human values such as freedom of information, the French authorities had refused to accredit Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik long before the conflict in Ukraine. French officials claimed that those publications were not mass media outlets, but propaganda tools, Lavrov noted. The United States, "the most freedom-loving nation,” has recently implanted a similar ban, Lavrov said.

RT and Sputnik were banned from broadcasting in the EU after the start of the military operation in Ukraine. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that those media outlets were part of the "Kremlin media machine." The restriction will stop them from spreading "toxic and harmful disinformation" in Europe, she added.

On September 4, the United States imposed sanctions against the Rossiya Segodnya media group, RIA Novosti, RT, Sputnik, and Ruptly. The sanctions also targeted RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan, her deputies, and a number of other individuals.

In late August, Pavel Durov was detained at Le Bourget Airport in Paris. He was charged with alleged refusal to cooperate with the authorities, complicity in distributing child pornography, drug trafficking, fraud as part of an organized group, and complicity in administering an online platform for concluding illegal transactions. Durov faces up to ten years in prison and a fine of €500,000. At the end of August, a Paris court released the Telegram CEO on €5 million bail. Durov was prohibited from leaving France.

Details

Pavel Durov (born 10 October 1984) is a Russian business executive and entrepreneur. Along with his brother Nikolai Durov, he founded the social network VK in 2006, which quickly became the most popular social network in Russia. In 2014, after a conflict with the new owners of the company and pressure from the Russian authorities, Durov resigned as CEO of VK and left Russia for the Caribbean nation of Saint Kitts and Nevis. Durov publicly stands for Internet freedom and criticises the establishment that tries to restrict it. He moved to the United Arab Emirates in 2017 and lives in Dubai, where Telegram headquarters are located. In the United Arab Emirates, he focused on the development of Telegram, a messenger he and his older brother created in 2013, which claims a high level of data privacy. Since 2021, he has held citizenship in four countries: Russia, Saint Kitts and Nevis, the United Arab Emirates, and France.