Source: TASS
The United States is behind the arrest in France of the founder and CEO of the Telegram communications platform Pavel Durov, Russian State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said today, quoted by Reuters.
Russian-born Durov was arrested in France over the weekend as part of an investigation into crimes related to child pornography, drug trafficking and illegal Telegram transactions.
The United States, through France, is trying to exercise control over Telegram, Vyacheslav Volodin said, without providing evidence for his claims.
“Telegram is one of the few, and at the same time the largest, Internet platforms that are not controlled by the United States,” Volodin said in a statement.
“On the eve of the American presidential elections, it is important for (President Joe) Biden to establish control over Telegram, the speaker of the State Duma also said.
The White House has not commented on Durov’s arrest. French President Emmanuel Macron said the arrest was not politically motivated.
The Kremlin said yesterday that it had not yet read the official French charges against Durov.
Dubai-based communications app Telegram has about one billion users and is particularly popular in Russia, Ukraine and the former Soviet republics.
After Russian forces invaded Ukraine in 2022, Telegram became the main source of unfiltered information about the conflict, Reuters notes. The platform has become, in the words of some analysts, a “virtual battlefield”, being actively used both by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and other Ukrainian representatives, and by the Russian government.
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