[TFNA]

Durov has been going hard against censorship because the pressure on Russians to switch to MAX might consign his own app to oblivion. But to call Durov “anti-Russia” when Telegram development and servers remained in Russia, is to ascribe to him a dissident status that he doesn’t actually deserve.

(Durov himself is known to regularly visit Russia, while denying he ever visits Russia. Telegram opened a Dubai office claiming that it was now a Dubai-headquartered company, but that was a mere legal formality; no one was actually there at that office, and journalists visiting it found that not even the building staff knew anything about Telegram. In practice, the company continues to exist out of Russia.)

[yaro330]

He's been against it way before MAX was a thing. He visited russia, yes, like a lot of expats with families that are stuck back there. His last visit was in 2021, again, way before MAX was a thing.

If you ever actually lived under the regime where censorship was real - you'd be on Telegram too. When internet goes down and nothing works - Telegram keeps working.

[kqp]

Do you have a source for any of this? Wikipedia and news that I can find support that he fled Russia after government conflicts. It’s also well known that he keeps his and the dev team’s location secret, so anybody going knocking on incorporation addresses in Dubai then feigning surprise is acting in bad faith.

[TFNA]

This was all over the news a couple of years ago when Russian entry/exit records were leaked. Doing a Google search for “durov visited russia frequently” will get you plenty of reportage.

"so anybody going knocking on incorporation addresses in Dubai" The point is that Telegram has repeatedly countered claims that it is a Russian app with "Actually, Telegram is a Dubai company”. People reasonably interpret that as more than a mere incorporation address, and it isn’t being emphasized enough that development is still largely done from Russia, and servers are also located there.