[dotcoma]

AFAIK, the FSB knocked on Durov’s previous company’s door, VKontakte, a Russian Facebook knock-off.

They asked for info on some of their users, were told “no” and… they told Durov that “it would be a good idea if you sold this thing to someone else”.

Which he did, for decent money but probably a lot less than it was worth. He then used that money to start Telegram, at first from Berlin and later on from Dubai, from 2017 I think.

VKontakte (VK) eventually created Max, a newish IM service that the tiger-fighting shortie at the Kremlin is pushing onto Russians, while trying to limit their use of Telegram, that is or at least was the standard in Russia.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2025/10/ru...

[omnimus]

This might as well be constructed story so people use Russian service (i doubt somebody would even consider it otherwise).

It would be very different if Telegram was all e2ee like Signal and with published client source code. But current state it's far more likely it's just a honeypot.