Muscovites toast as they listen to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s annual New Year’s speech (on screen).Image: EPA
Pavel Durov’s messaging service appears to be collaborating with European regulators and is now blocking Russian state media in several European countries.
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In the hybrid war waged by Vladimir Putin against Europe, Telegram plays a central role. The messaging service is used by Russian secret services to recruit accomplices for acts of sabotage in NATO countries.
Additionally, Telegram is considered a breeding ground for extremists of all stripes, due to its lax, if any, moderation of content on public channels.
On Telegram, it is difficult to fight against illegal content.Image: imago-images.de
Russian state media freely spread their propagandistic lies there, directly or indirectly reaching an audience of millions. But that could change: Telegram channels have recently been blocked in several European countries.
This raises new questions
What happened?
A few days ago, Telegram blocked access to the channels of Russia’s largest media organizations across much of Europe.
In the affected European countries, if one tries to access the Telegram channels of the Russian news agency RIA Novosti or other Russian propagandist media, a message is displayed, indicating that the contents are not available, because they ” violate local laws.
Screenshot showing that the Russian channel RIA Novosti is no longer accessible from the Netherlands.source: bsky.app
On Sunday, Telegram channels of TV channels Rossiya 1, Perviy Kanal and NTV were also inaccessible in several European Union (EU) countries, including France, Belgium, Poland, Greece, the Netherlands and Italy.
Why is this important?
Problematic content from Telegram then often ends up on other social networks, reaching an even wider audience. Among them, Elon Musk’s X platform, but also Instagram and Facebook of the Meta group, and even YouTube, owned by the Alphabet group (Google).
Despite its 45 million users in Europe, Telegram had long flown under the radar of European regulators. Due to the societal risks they represent, these platforms are subject to strict rules. However, they are often ignored, as a recent investigation into the spread of Russian war propaganda demonstrated.
It is likely that the European Union exerted pressure behind the scenes for Telegram to block Russian state media outlets subject to sanctions. Neither Telegram nor European authorities have publicly confirmed these blocks, according to the information portal specializing in cybersecurity The Record.
Since the arrest of Pavel Durov, founder of Telegram, in August 2024, the company seems more cooperative in the fight against illegal content.
In France, Pavel Durov is under investigation for several offenses, including complicity in the dissemination of child pornography and drug trafficking via the platform.
Why weren’t these Russian propaganda outlets blocked sooner?
The European Union sanctioned the main Russian propaganda outlets RT (formerly Russia Today) and Sputnik from the start of the invasion of Ukraine in spring 2022. Technical measures aimed at blocking Russian propaganda in Europe can certainly be circumvented . The sanctions, however, seriously impacted RT, as reported by the German channel Tagesschau in 2023.
RT has tried to circumvent the blocks through various means to continue reaching audiences outside of Russia.
In May 2024, the European Union strengthened its measures against Russian state propaganda by sanctioning other influential media outlets. Since then, the websites of Russian newspapers Rossiyskaya Gazeta et Izvestiafrom the RIA Novosti news agency and the multilingual platform Voice of Europe are blocked in the EU.
In response, Moscow restricted access to more than 80 European media outlets in Russia, including Politico, The mirror et The Worldbefore blocking them.
Is Switzerland affected?
Russian state media say the blockades are also effective in Switzerland. The state news agency RIA Novosti wrote on December 28:
“RIA Novosti’s Telegram channel has been blocked in Europe. According to our correspondents, it is no longer available in Poland, Belgium, Switzerland, Greece, Czech Republic and Italy.”
source: Telegram (translated from Russian)
Screenshot: watson
However, according to our checks, this statement is false: Switzerland does not support this part of the European sanctions. RT and others are therefore not banned in the country, despite their hate speech against certain elected officials.
How is Russia reacting?
The Kremlin called the blocking of Russian Telegram channels an “act of political censorship” and a “crime” against Russian journalists.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said on Sunday that the Kremlin would take “symmetrical retaliatory measures” if international human rights organizations did not intervene.
It should be remembered that in 2024, Telegram claimed to have deleted 15 million groups and channels due to abuse of minors, calls for violence or terrorist content.
A clear increase in deletions was observed in September, when Pavel Durov, after his arrest in Paris, announced that the platform would cooperate more with the judicial authorities.
Translated and adapted from German by Tanja Maeder
