Durov: who is the ‘Russian Mark Zuckerberg’ who founded Telegram?
Pavel Durov has become one of the world’s most influential and controversial tech entrepreneurs
For years, Pavel Durov has been described as the ‘Russian Mark Zuckerberg’: the young entrepreneur who had built the country’s largest social network and who had chosen exile rather than bow to the demands of the Kremlin. Today, at the age of 41, his story is far more complex. The founder of Telegram has become the symbol of one of the most controversial issues in the digital economy: to what extent can the owner of a platform be held responsible for what its users do?
This question lies at the heart of the legal proceedings concerning him. In 2024, the and the French authorities launched an investigation, claiming that Telegram had not done enough to combat criminal activities such as drug trafficking, fraud, terrorism and the dissemination of child pornography, initiating proceedings that represent one of the first attempts in Europe to hold the senior management of a digital platform directly liable. Two years later, Russia also charged Durov with aiding and abetting terrorism, accusing him of failing to remove content which, according to Moscow, was being used by the Ukrainian secret services and extremist groups to organise acts of sabotage and attacks on Russian territory.
The paradox is clear: the man who left Russia, denouncing pressure from the Kremlin, now finds himself in the crosshairs of both Moscow and the Western democracies, albeit for opposite reasons.
From Russia to exile
Born in Leningrad in 1984, Durov spent part of his childhood in Italia, where his father, a professor of philology, taught at university. On his return to St Petersburg, he studied at St Petersburg State University and, in 2006, founded VKontakte, the social network destined to become the Russian equivalent of Facebook. Within a few years, the platform had attracted tens of millions of users and turned Durov into one of the country’s most famous tech entrepreneurs.
His public image, however, is built as much on his entrepreneurial success as on his challenge to political power. At the height of the protests against Vladimir Putin, he refused to close the accounts of his opponents and rejected the authorities’ requests to hand over user data. In 2014, he broke definitively with the Kremlin: he sold his stake in VK and left Russia, stating that he had preferred to give up the company rather than turn it into a tool of state surveillance.
