Pavel Durov

I kept running VK.

But I knew my days in Russia were numbered.

It can definitely happen.

As you said, there are certain indications.

There have been certain test attempts to partially ban it.

Telegram is no longer accessible in parts of Russia, such as Dagestan.

And it would be incredibly sad if Russia restores its attempts to ban Telegram because currently

It's been used by its population for all kinds of purposes, not just personal communication or economic business activities, but also it's the only platform which allows the Russian people to access independent sources of information.

If you think about

media outlets such as BBC or any other non-Russian sources of information, they're only accessible in Russia through Telegram in the form of Telegram channels.

Their websites are banned, some other social media sites are banned,

And as you said, there are indications that Russia is planning to migrate users from existing messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Telegram to their own homegrown tool.

which would, of course, be fully transparent to the government and wouldn't allow voices independent from the government to express themselves.

It's certainly an alarming trend.

We see these attempts in countries that are not famous for protecting freedom of speech, but also increasingly in countries that

have been known to protect freedoms.

And this creates this vicious circle.

Because, in a way, European countries trying to fight freedom of speech under pretexts that sound legitimate, such as combating misinformation or election interference, they create precedents and they legitimize

restrictions to freedom of speech, which then in turn be used by authoritarian regimes.

And they would say in places like China or Iran that they're not doing anything different.