Russia’s Federal Security Service, the FSB, has charged Pavel Durov, the founder and chief executive of the messaging app Telegram, with aiding terrorism and placed him on an international wanted list, according to Russian state media and multiple Western outlets that confirmed the charges.
The FSB said Telegram had failed to remove channels, chats and bots used by “Ukrainian special services and by terrorist and extremist organizations” to prepare and coordinate attacks inside Russia, according to the agency’s statement cited by NBC News and other outlets. If convicted in Russia, Durov could face up to life in prison under the country’s terrorism statutes.
Durov, a 41-year-old Russian-born billionaire who has lived outside the country for years and is currently based in the Gulf, has not commented publicly on the new charges as of this writing. He already faces a separate and unrelated criminal case in France, where he was charged in 2024 with complicity in a series of offenses tied to content moderation failures on Telegram, including allegations involving drug trafficking and child sexual exploitation material, charges he has denied.
The Russian charges mark a further escalation in the Kremlin’s yearslong campaign to bring Telegram under tighter control. Moscow has moved through several stages of pressure on the platform since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, including throttling Telegram’s speed inside Russia earlier this year and imposing what amounted to a near-complete blockade of the app in April 2026, according to reporting from The Hacker News and Bloomberg.
Despite the restrictions, Telegram remains one of the most widely used communication platforms in Russia and across much of the former Soviet Union, and it has become a primary source of independent and unfiltered news for millions of Russians who distrust state media. That dual role, as both a tool used by ordinary Russians to bypass censorship and, according to the FSB, a channel exploited by hostile actors, sits at the center of the Kremlin’s long-running conflict with Durov.
Durov built Telegram into a global platform with hundreds of millions of users by emphasizing encrypted, largely unmoderated communication, a design philosophy that has repeatedly put him at odds with governments in Russia, France and elsewhere that argue the platform enables criminal and extremist activity to flourish with insufficient oversight.
The new terrorism charge is unlikely to result in Durov’s arrest anytime soon given that he does not reside in Russia, but it formalizes Moscow’s position that Telegram bears responsibility for facilitating attacks on Russian soil, and it is likely to further complicate any effort by Durov to travel or conduct business tied to Russian jurisdiction.
Sources: Al Jazeera, NBC News, Bloomberg