U.S. Gov-Funded Censorship Arm "Atlantic Council" Targeted Telegram Just Two Months Before Durov Arrest

French authorities arrested Russian-born dual UAE-French citizen Pavel Durov last weekend as he disembarked his private plane in Paris. Durov, who is the CEO and founder of popular messaging app Telegram, faces a number of serious charges from French authorities ranging from drug offenses to child sexual exploitation offenses.

Of course, none of these charges have anything to do with Durov directly but rather refer to activity that allegedly occurred on Telegram, Durov’s privacy-focused messaging app that boasts nearly 1 billion active users. It is unclear from the charging documents what exactly the French authorities’ argument is regarding Durov’s culpability, and French President Emmanuel Macron defensively took to X (formerly Twitter) to assure the public that the arrest wasn’t “political.” Nonetheless, it’s extraordinarily unlikely that Durov’s arrest is unconnected to Durov’s well-known refusals to cooperate with intelligence agencies’ censorship and law enforcement requests. Furthermore, it is inconceivable that Durov’s arrest would occur without the foreknowledge and implicit approval, if not direct complicity and urging, of the United States government. There are even reputable reports that Macron himself may have lured Durov in for his arrest, as Durov apparently told French authorities that he traveled to Paris at the invitation of Macron to have dinner with the French President. Odd indeed.

Suspicions regarding the timing and possible US complicity in Durov’s arrest are heightened by virtue of a DFR Lab-sponsored conference attacking Telegram’s refusal to censor information relevant to the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

The Atlantic Council’s DFR Lab is a major censorship arm of the US regime, whose censorship activities were prominently featured in the recently released Twitter Files, as well as the associated testimony of Shellenberger to the Judiciary Committee...

As though it’s not suspicious enough that the Atlantic Council is funded by US government intelligence agencies, the Atlantic Council was also infamously funded by notorious Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Pinchuk (more on this below). Thus we see the convenient timing that two months after the Atlantic Council (censorship cutout of the US government) singles out Telegram’s problematic refusal to censor information in the Ukraine war, Durov is arrested in France. Funny how that works!

This is consistent with the findings of Mike Benz, a former State Department official and world authority on the censorship-industrial complex. Benz has reported US government-funded outlets like Radio Free Europe singling out Telegram for attack along a similar timeline (shortly after Durov’s interview with Tucker Carlson four months ago).

Durov’s arrest is without question a significant flashpoint in the critical and disturbing developments at the intersection of online censorship and geopolitics. The arrest not only confirms but also escalates a pattern that we have identified in previous pieces, whereby regimes have transitioned from mere repetitional and deplatforming attacks to the arrest, indictment, and imprisonment of those who engage in or facilitate unapproved speech.