FSB Charges Telegram Founder Pavel Durov with Aiding Terrorism

Russia's Federal Security Service said on Wednesday that it had charged Telegram founder Pavel Durov with aiding terrorist activity and with failing to remove information banned by law. According to the agency, the platform “did not remove numerous channels, chats and bots” allegedly used by Ukrainian intelligence services and extremist organizations to plan acts of sabotage, mass killings and fraudulent operations inside the country.

Durov has been charged under Part 1.1 of Article 205.1 of the Russian Criminal Code and placed on an international wanted list. The security service claims that these actions led to casualties, including among women and children, and to damages running into the billions.

The chatbot scheme

The statement pays particular attention to the chatbot of the “Divinchik” dating service. According to the FSB, agents posing as young women struck up conversations with young Russians, extracted the geolocation of meeting spots near large shopping centers or critical facilities, and coaxed their contacts into paying for tickets and gifts through phishing links.

At the next stage, the agency claims, the same people — now posing as law enforcement officers or Rosfinmonitoring officials — contacted the victims through foreign messengers. They convinced them that the money they had transferred had gone to accounts of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and that the coordinates they had shared were being used to plan strikes, and, under the threat of criminal prosecution, coerced them into committing arson and armed attacks, presenting this as “checks of anti-terrorist security.”

According to joint operations by the FSB, the Interior Ministry and the Investigative Committee, 46 citizens between the ages of 12 and 22 have been detained since July 2025. They are accused of attacks on law enforcement officers, arson targeting transportation, energy and financial infrastructure, and of acting as couriers who delivered funds stolen from defrauded citizens to crypto exchangers.

Telegram's response

Telegram's official account on X answered the accusations laconically — with a photo of Durov raising his middle finger. The messenger's founder himself, who lives in Dubai, has not publicly commented on the situation.

The charges come amid sustained pressure on Telegram: earlier in the year its operation in Russia began to be throttled, and in April 2026 it was effectively blocked. Nearly two years earlier, Durov had already been detained in France, where he was accused of doing too little to combat unlawful activity on the platform.

Source: The Hacker News