Pavel Durov is a Kremlin ally who pretends to be in exile from Russia. The app being sort-of blocked in Russia is just a part of the elaborate PR campaign to legitimize this VK spin-off.
Telegram has shipped blatant backdoors in the past (This one is particularly egregious as there's no way to explain away this MITM feature as a bug) http://habrahabr.ru/post/206900/