Telegram founder Pavel Durov says Russia’s Internet crackdown has pushed ‘digital sovereignty’ further out of reach and driven developers to leave

Source: Pavel Durov

Internet blocks in Russia have only pushed the country further from “digital sovereignty,” Telegram founder Pavel Durov said.

“The people who could actually build a Russian smartphone OS are bailing out of the country in droves because the internet there is broken,” he wrote on his Telegram channel. “And without that kind of system, every app on a phone — ‘homegrown’ or not — is wide open to targeted surveillance and censorship from the U.S. through backdoors in iOS and Android and their app stores.”

Durov said swapping “foreign” apps for “national” ones while keeping American operating systems was basically “changing the packaging without changing what’s inside”: Potemkin villages, he said, with a side of corruption. “The Russian official who broke the internet and set the country back decades in the name of ‘digital sovereignty’ deserves a National Security Medal — from the United States.”

Russia’s internet restrictions have worsened significantly since the start of 2026. Mobile internet outages have spread from outlying regions to St. Petersburg and Moscow. Authorities have begun throttling Telegram alongside YouTube, in some cases blocking it entirely. During these blackouts — which officials attribute to drone threats — whitelisted services are supposed to remain accessible, but Telegram and WhatsApp are not on those lists. Durov has advised Russians to use the latest versions of Telegram and get a VPN.

At Meduza, we are committed to transparency about our use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom. The story you’re reading was written by one of our living, breathing journalists and translated from Russian using an AI model configured to follow our strict editorial standards. This translation process is the result of extensive testing and refinements to ensure our English-language coverage is timely and accurate. A Meduza editor reviews every draft before publication.

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Telegram founder Pavel Durov says Russia’s Internet crackdown has pushed ‘digital sovereignty’ further out of reach and driven developers to leave

Backdoor

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Telegram founder Pavel Durov says Russia’s Internet crackdown has pushed ‘digital sovereignty’ further out of reach and driven developers to leave

Backdoor

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