The case traces back to a Telegram dating chatbot Russia had already banned. The FSB says Ukrainian intelligence used it to recruit Russians for sabotage, and that 46 people have been detained.
Russia's FSB security service said Wednesday that Telegram founder Pavel Durov has been charged under Part 1.1 of Article 205.1 of the Russian Criminal Code, the clause covering assistance to terrorist activity. The agency also said his name now appears on an international wanted list, something Interpol had not corroborated at the time.
The accusation rests on what the FSB says Telegram leaves standing: the channels, chats and bots that Ukraine's intelligence agencies, together with groups classed as terrorist and extremist, use to arrange sabotage, attacks and cyber fraud on Russian territory. That, in the agency's account, has cost lives — women and children among the dead — and caused material damage running into the billions.
The case itself grew out of an investigation into a Telegram dating chatbot, Dayvinchik, also known as Leo, which Roskomnadzor, Russia's telecom and media regulator, had already banned. On it, the FSB alleges, Ukrainian agents ran fake accounts posing as women to draw young Russian men into online relationships, arranging meetings and gifts through phishing links; the men were then contacted by people presenting themselves as Russian law-enforcement officers, who pressed them into arson and other attacks described to them as security checks.
Forty-six people have been detained in that investigation, the agency says, aged between 12 and 22 and held since last summer.
Neither Durov nor Telegram has addressed the charges directly. After word of them got out, Telegram's account on X posted an image of Durov making a crude gesture. Durov's own stated position dates to February, when the case was opened: he wrote on X then that the authorities were inventing fresh pretexts to curb Russians' access to Telegram, the aim being to stifle the rights to privacy and free speech.
The charge falls on a service Russia has been restricting since August 2025. Fines this year have run past 100 million rubles, imposed largely because the platform did not take down material prohibited under Russian law, while the state promotes MAX, its own messaging app.
It is not the first criminal case Durov faces over what circulates on Telegram. Prosecutors in France charged him in 2024 over allegations that drug dealing, fraud run by an organised group and images of child sexual abuse were spreading on the platform; he was released under judicial supervision after posting bail of €5 million. He denies wrongdoing and has argued the case lacks any legal or logical basis. The curbs on his travel were lifted earlier in the year, letting him leave France, though the criminal probe there has not concluded. Both prosecutions grow out of the same allegation — that Telegram will neither remove content nor work with investigators — and they come from two governments standing on opposing sides of the war in Ukraine.
Whether Russia has applied for an Interpol Red Notice covering Durov was a question the FSB left unaddressed. A notice of that kind does not, on its own, amount to an international arrest warrant.