Telegram, a messaging app with almost 900 million users created by the Russian-born IT superstar Pavel Durov, has become the leading communication tool in Ukraine. But its ubiquity is making some lawmakers nervous.
Used by the Ukrainian military to gather information about Russian activity, a block on some of Telegram’s crucial intelligence-gathering tools in April raised red flags about relying too heavily on one form of communication.
The company said the block, which was quickly lifted, was an error, while Durov, who moved to Dubai in 2014 after refusing a demand from Russia’s security forces to leak the data of Ukrainian protesters, insists he is simply providing both sides with the same technology.
He proposed curbs on access to Telegram in Russia and Ukraine after the full-scale invasion in February 2022, to prevent its use for military propaganda, but he bowed to users’ opposition to restrictions after they demanded the freedom to access uncensored information.
Telegram channels are a source of information for 44% of Ukrainians, according to the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, and most of Ukraine’s government institutions have Telegram broadcasting channels, including the President and the Main Directorate of Intelligence.
Among the advantages are the messaging app’s commitment to freedom of speech, with moderation only in extreme cases, and its user-friendly design.
Telegram’s anonymous chatbots, automated accounts that allow users to request or send information, have become a significant factor in the war. Ukraine’s Security Service and Intelligence Directorate, for example, use the feature to gather photographs and details about enemy activity in the occupied territories.
On April 28, some of the chatbots linked to Ukraine’s military were terminated by Telegram, before being restored the next day.
The bots were “temporarily disabled due to a false positive but have since been reinstated,” a company spokesperson said. Just days earlier Durov had said Telegram would “ban accounts and bots that collect coordinates to target strikes or post direct personal information with calls to violence.”
The connection between his comments and the temporary block was unclear, but the company’s actions provoked a wave of criticism in Ukraine, building on opposition that had been brewing for months.
Yaroslav Yurchishyn, head of the Ukrainian parliament’s Committee on Freedom of Speech, and one of Telegram’s most prominent critics had already proposed a ban on the app, arguing it was ineffective against Russian chatbots and that its relationship to the Kremlin is unknown. He was also one of a cross-party group of lawmakers behind draft legislation to impose state regulation.
Olha Herasymiuk, head of the National Council for Television and Radio Broadcasting, added her voice to the opposition, advising the government to stop using Telegram for official communications.
The proposals met with fierce criticism. Ilia Samoilenko, an officer with the 3rd Assault (formerly the Azov) Brigade, criticized the proposed ban, saying the app had vital features and played an important role in the war, while some politicians opposed government regulation, citing concerns about freedom of speech.
An anonymous soldier connected with air defense in the south of Ukraine, whose Telegram channel has 2.3 million followers, said he receives 1,000 messages a week with the location of missiles moving around the occupied territories. The chatbots have a tangible impact, helping Ukrainian soldiers protect their country, he said.
The security of Telegram is a subject of debate. Regular chats are considered less secure than Signal, for example, because they do not use secure end-to-end encryption by default, though there is a function allowing encrypted “Secret Chats,” in which the data is not stored on the Telegram servers and is harder to hack.
The app gained a reputation as a safe messenger when it was widely used during protests in Iran, Hong Kong, Belarus, and elsewhere. Durov insists Telegram is a non-partisan platform primarily focused on the privacy of users, protecting their data from governments and other authorities.
While a number of experts have highlighted the dangers of weak encryption, no proven cases have been found of Telegram leaking data to the Russian security forces. The Main Directorate of Intelligence says the messages it receives via chatbots from people in the occupied territories are protected.
The desire to ban the messenger would also negatively impact freedom of speech in Ukraine, where it is a primary source of information for millions of people.
Like many social media channels, Telegram cuts both ways. It channels enemy propaganda and allows its spies to operate, of course. The judgment is whether that outweighs the benefits — which are substantial.
Mykyta Vorobiov is a Ukrainian political adviser, journalist and political science student at Bard College Berlin. For the last two years, he has been developing articles on politics and law for CEPA, VoxEurop, JURIST, and others
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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