Russia accuses Telegram founder Pavel Durov of “cooperation with terrorism” and seeks his international arrest

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) issued an international arrest warrant on Wednesday for Pavel Durov, the founder of the Telegram messaging service, citing charges of aiding and abetting terrorism.

“Durov has been accused of collaborating with terrorist activities. He has been issued an international arrest warrant,” the agency stated in a notice published on its official website.

According to lawyer Vladimir Zherebenkov, speaking to the Russian news agency TASS, this is a very serious charge that could carry a life sentence if Durov is found guilty.

He added that Durov could be arrested in absentia in Russia, after which Russian authorities would seek his extradition through Interpol.

Telegram’s official account on the social network X reacted almost immediately to the news, posting an old photo of the messaging service’s founder giving the middle finger to the camera.

pic.twitter.com/7LEvOWAI3L

— Telegram Messenger (@telegram) July 29, 2026

This is an image that Durov had already used in 2011 after the Russian holding company Mail.ru expressed its intention to acquire the social network VKontakte, the Russian Facebook, which he also created.

Later, in 2014, Durov left the company, and the social network came under the control of Mail.ru under the name VK.

The FSB stated that Telegram, in violation of Russian law, “failed to remove numerous channels, chats, and bots from the application actively used by Ukrainian intelligence agencies, extremist and terrorist organizations to organize and coordinate sabotage and terrorist attacks, mass murder, and cyber fraud in Russia.”

“This has resulted in numerous victims, including women and minors, as well as billions of dollars in material damages,” the service maintained.

Who is Pavel Durov?
Photo: Instagram/Pavel Durov

Durov was born in 1984 in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) and lives in Dubai, where Telegram’s headquarters are also located. In addition to Russian and UAE citizenship, he also holds a French passport.

As a child, he attended the St. Petersburg Academic Gymnasium, a prestigious school known for its emphasis on mathematics and science, and later studied Applied Mathematics and Computer Science at St. Petersburg State University.

In high school, he dabbled in programming, and later, while studying English at university, he created a digital library called Durov.com and an online forum for students. Durov later admitted that he created different online accounts and argued with himself on his forum to encourage discussion.

While Durov’s career has been filled with both achievements and controversies in the digital world, in July 2024 he surprised everyone by revealing that he is the biological father of more than 100 children.

On his Telegram channel, where he has over 11 million followers, the tycoon explained that he has helped more than 100 couples in 12 countries have children and that even today, years after ceasing to be a donor, some of his frozen sperm remains in fertility clinics.

The Jumeirah Islands of Dubai.

Durov, whose fortune, according to Forbes magazine, is valued at $6.6 billion, also holds citizenship in Saint Kitts and Nevis and currently lives in a luxurious five-bedroom mansion on a 15,000-square-meter property in the Jumeirah Islands.

The tech entrepreneur, known as the Russian Zuckerberg, left his native country after refusing to cooperate with Putin’s secret services, who demanded he provide encrypted data on users of his first social network.

“As soon as an agency manages to monitor private communications without oversight, this access quickly falls into the hands of third parties: bribers, hackers, agents from other countries,” he argued once he was out of the country.

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The founder of the messaging app urged users to use “any messaging app except WhatsApp.” He explained that this is to prevent phones from being hacked, as “it’s not secure.”

How the scheme Russia is denouncing would work

The Russian FSB stated that Ukrainian intelligence agents were posing as young women who, through deception, managed to receive transfers from their victims. They then extorted the victims, accusing them of sending money to the enemy, in order to implicate them in attacks against law enforcement officers, arson attacks on transportation, energy, communications, and banking facilities.

Furthermore, they were forced to act as messengers in scams targeting other victims, a crime also punishable under Russian law.

Putin during a speech at the Federal Security Service (FSB) Board meeting in Moscow, Russia, in 2025.