Drug dealers to Putin critics: Behind Pavel Durov’s rare Telegram audience

Once upon a time, buying drugs in Bishkek, the capital of the Central Asian nation of Kyrgyzstan, involved consorting with criminal elements. Now, anyone with a smartphone can place an order for amphetamines, hashish and other illicit substances, and be instantly directed to a dead drop hidden somewhere in the city.

The app at the heart of it all? Telegram.

“Absolutely everything is done through Telegram: all the shops, platforms and chats are based on there,” explained Dina*, a young courier in her early twenties. “It’s convenient and confidential.”

It has channels for everything from job vacancies to cryptocurrency exchanges, she said. Dina started out as a courier when she was 19 and “wanted to earn some easy money”.

“In a few days, they gave me the location of the master treasure [wholesale consignment]. You go and collect 10 packets, already packed, then you distribute it around where they tell you, in which area, you take photos [of the hiding spot] and every two weeks you receive a payment in your crypto wallet.”

The ease and security with which the app can be used for illegal acts are now in sharp focus, after Pavel Durov, the billionaire founder and CEO of Telegram, was arrested in Paris on Saturday evening as he stepped off his private jet.

Durov is accused of facilitating cybercrime including fraud, drug dealing and child porn by not scrubbing them from his platform and failing to cooperate with regulators on the issue. Telegram is a major platform for drug trafficking not only in former Soviet countries but elsewhere – including France, where the Paris-based Cali Weed cannabis delivery service promotes its products and recruits couriers via the app.

Yet the very same hands-off approach to regulation that Durov faces scrutiny over is what also makes Telegram a much-loved app among wide-ranging audiences: Russians and Ukrainians alike; critics of governments as well as propagandists.

“I am outraged by the arrest of Pavel Durov,” Russian social-democrat politician Nikolai Kavkazsky told Al Jazeera. “Pavel is trying to create a platform without censorship. Of course, he does not always succeed, but of the platforms that I know, it is now one of the freest.

The Saint Petersburg-born entrepreneur, who holds French and Emirati citizenship, became a hero to Russian liberals when he refused to shut down opposition pages on VK – the Russian equivalent to Facebook which he co-founded – during mass protests against President Vladimir Putin in 2011. He was subsequently ousted from his own social network a few years later after falling under pressure from pro-Kremlin investors, selling his own stake in the company and leaving for Dubai, from where he launched Telegram.

As well as a messaging app, Telegram is also a means for sharing news and media, the most popular channels providing content to millions of subscribers. Purportedly free of government control, it provides a platform for unfiltered and uncensored material in countries such as Russia and Iran.

“In Russia, this is probably the only large platform where people can convey their oppositionist, pro-peace views to a wide audience, without having to bypass various forms of blocking,” Kavkazsky said. Russian platforms like VK – which is now controlled by pro-Putin oligarchs – can censor, ban or limit such content, he said.

To be sure, this has also come at a price. The near-total lack of oversight has meant that anyone can share anything – including revenge porn, child sexual abuse, and, if Russian authorities are to be believed, suspected “terrorists”.

Telegram was banned in Russia in 2018 amid a standoff between Durov and the Federal Security Service (FSB), which demanded that the app share its encryption keys, ostensibly to monitor those it described as “terrorists”. Durov publicly refused, but the ban was lifted two years later when a compromise was seemingly reached, allowing the phone numbers and IP addresses of suspects to be shared with authorities, but not access to their messages or encryption.

“We do not allow the state to install cameras in our homes in order to prevent a crime, so why must we abandon our privacy to make law enforcement’s work easier?” said Artem Kozlyuk, co-founder of the Russian digital rights organisation Roskomsvoboda.

“You cannot blame the service for the fact someone will use it for criminal activity. A knife can be used to cut vegetables or to kill, but we do not prohibit the distribution of household knives.”

Since 2020, however, some Kremlin critics have approached the platform with scepticism. For instance, the security services appeared to have access to activists’ data during protests earlier this year in the central Russian region of Bashkortostan. Some in the Russian opposition suspect that, despite Telegram’s stated commitment to privacy, the authorities are able to read their chats, either through security flaws or a secret deal struck with the Russian government.

“Telegram does not use end-to-end encryption (E2EE) – a tool that ensures that only the sender and intended recipient(s) can see the message – on all its chats by default,” explained Natalia Krapiva, senior tech-legal counsel at international digital rights organisation Access Now.

Although Access Now is concerned about Durov’s detention, it has also highlighted flaws in Telegram’s design and lack of oversight.

“People need to manually opt-in to use E2EE ‘secret chats,’ which are limited to two users, meaning that group chats are never end-to-end encrypted … Telegram’s failure to implement end-to-end encryption for messaging as a default has made the people using the platform and their data vulnerable to hackers and government coercion.”

“Like any other internet service – Facebook, Google – Telegram receives government requests and partially satisfies them,” added Kozlyuk. “If something like [co-operation with the FSB] emerges, it will greatly discredit Durov and his reputation. No one else would use his services. And such sensitive stories have a tendency to leak out, sooner or later.”

Still, Telegram has emerged as an important news source during the Russia-Ukrainian war. Kremlin-aligned figures such as the hawkish former president, Dmitry Medvedev, and militaristic so-called Z-Bloggers have used it to amplify Russian victories while disparaging Ukraine and its Western backers.

Concerned about disinformation, Ukrainian lawmakers have considered banning it, but the app’s millions of Ukrainian users have proven that impractical since it’s one of the quickest ways to convey warnings about incoming air raids, and almost every public official uses Telegram, including President Volodymyr Zelenskyy himself.