Putin is freaking out the Russian government Russian military and even the Russian intelligence Community had full trust in the messaging app Telegram and used it for their day-to-day Communications then just a few days ago the telegram founder and CEO was arrested in France but it wasn't a normal arrest as I first thought that's because he knew he would be arrested and he willingly flew into Paris on his private jet that's more like a surrender than an arrest that's why Putin is having a meltdown first he has ordered all military personnel to delete sens messages on
the app and then delete the app from their phone secondly the Russian media is in full-blown panic they are blaming the CIA USA France and everyone in between for this arrest even the Russian Embassy is trying to get access to door off which is wild considering in the past he has publicly posted a picture of himself giving the middle finger to Putin and now it seems like he was in control of the communication app that the whole Russian government relied on so the relationship between Putin and durov is complicated what's even more complicated is that
Putin is still trying to figure out if this is an arrest or Surrender you see both Putin and durov were in aayan's capital before the billionaire flew to Paris in fact durov requested a meeting but Putin declined and then from there Duro flew directly to Paris where he knew he would be arrested so I guess Putin's definitely regretting turning down that meeting now anyways in this video let's get into why the Russian government is having a meltdown how the communication failure affects the front lines and why Russian spies in other countries are at risk of
being exposed now you guys see the title of this video right I am chuckling but this video is about to be bombarded with dislikes from Bots from Russia so please please help me out and hit the like button on the video so it doesn't die in the algorithm maybe go ahead and share it on social media too if you can now let's start off with the most widely discussed scenario namely something that has to do with Russia this is because of the current situation in the country especially in the social media landscape Putin has just
started a massive Crackdown on social media platforms with one obvious reason the continued Ukrainian Invasion into the Russian K region is terrible PR for him it makes Putin look incapable and it places the war he started in a bad light tons of videos and stories from Kur are spreading on the internet showing the civilian and Military damage recently there have also been repeat Ukrainian drone attacks on buildings in Russian cities including the largest ever drone attack on Moscow this is spreading fear across Russian Society right now the Kremlin is doing everything it can to prevent
the damage Russians can't access YouTube anymore and recently the messenger app signal has also been blocked Facebook and Instagram have been banned for longer telegram has remained accessible though although there have occasionally been suspicious outages on the app telegram is the largest mobile app in Russia making up 60 to 80% of total internet traffic volume in the country it has been on the rise recently overtaking WhatsApp as the most widely used messenger the app is supposedly secure and private as it offers endtoend encrypted messaging but people are doubtful about this after all why would Russia
ban something like signal but allow a similar app like telegram which is much larger some speculate that this has to do with Russia's ability to monitor telegram messages default Chats on the platform are not encrypted so the Russian government can easily intercept them in fact most of the traffic is not encrypted because people forget to turn the feature on but for the messages that are encrypted it becomes much harder for the Russian government in order to access these chats there would have to be a built-in backd door for the Russian cyber agencies the company has
of course denied the allegations that such a back door exists to be honest I don't really know the telegram CEO and the Russian government have definitely not always work together ever since paval durov got successful his relationship with the authorities has been shaky in 2006 he launched Russia's version of Facebook named V contact or VK in short it became a multi-billion company in no time with millions of Russian users in 2011 though the Russian police came knocking at durov's door the government wanted him to remove opposition politicians from VK after the 2011 election this was
at a time when there were widespread protests in the country because people believed there was electoral fraud however durov didn't take the police threat seriously at all he didn't open the door and the police left soon after later he would post this picture showing his middle finger presumably to Putin this was after the Russian government demanded access to all private messaging data on the platform it would go wrong again in 2014 when the Russian authorities wanted to get personal data from Ukrainian users involved in the eurom maiden protests durov refused because he was committed to
free speech and privacy but other investors in VK were more favorable to Putin and dismissed durov as the CEO of the company he and his brother who was also one of the co-founders said it had been effectively taken over by the government the billionaire decided to leave Russia behind with no plans to go back he received citizenship in the island nation of St kits and nevas outside of Russia he and his brother continued with their new telegram project which became widely successful durov decided to create a HQ based in the UAE where he got a
citizenship interestingly the businessman also got a citizenship in France in 2021 it's unclear how he got it since France doesn't give them away easily and he hasn't lived in the country the official reason was that durov contributed to France's influence abroad we also don't know why he wanted to get this citizenship there are theories that this was part of some kind of deal which would suggest that the businessman has a more complex relationship with the French government than we know we'll touch on what France has got to do with this story later on but first
we have to go back to Russia's policy on telegram the kremlin's internet Watchdog rosom nadzor actually tried to block Telegram in 2018 it was unsuccessful as telegram evaded it using a technique called domain fronting presumably the Russian cyber police gave up their attempt in 2020 and the ban was lifted even though it didn't go through this just shows that the Kremlin wasn't very pleased with the app the tensions have been there for years but not everyone believes that the ban was lifted because of the technical failure on Russia's side another theory is that telegram provided
the back door we talked about earlier in 2020 the official reason the rosom zor gave for lifting the blockade was this it said that paval durov was prepared to cooperate in combating terrorism and extremism on the app what extremism means exactly remains vague as well as how telegram agreed to combat it a potential backo could explain the sudden halt in the Crackdown another reason to believe durov is working together with the Kremlin is that he has visited Russia more than 50 times after he went on his supposed Exile however durov has denied these allegations on
all accounts to give him his due it would be a huge breaking character if he suddenly started working with Putin another explanation is that the Russian government just found found out how strong the encryption really was and if you can't beat them you have to join them right anyways back to 2024 with the political heat Putin wants to get more censorship on the internet perhaps the Russian authorities wanted to go too far which paval durov refused to do they could have threatened him in some way which then sparked him to go to France in Exile
if durov got the impression that the Russian government was out to get him this would make sense after all he'd be safer in a French prison than out in the open still it leaves us with the obvious question as to why he didn't go somewhere else he could have just gone to the UAE where he also has a citizenship what makes it even weirder is that both Putin and durov were in azan's capital before the billionaire flew to Paris both were officially there to talk to azeri government officials but I don't believe that was a
coincidence one telegram Channel said d requested a meeting which Putin declined other Russian media have also claimed that there has been no meeting when people started questioning this if it happened or not the intent was probably there this brings us to another theory maybe durov has some dirt on Putin or some plan that hurt his government then he tried to talk to him in neutral territory in order to put pressure on him afterwards durov could have willingly gone to Paris in order to share some Danger dangerous information after all why would he try to meet
Putin before heading over to enemy territory the answer could have to do with this the Russian military uses telegram as their main source of communications the Russian intelligence Community including spies also use telegram this is because they themselves haven't been able or willing to make their own endtoend encrypted messenger there's a huge problem with this though if durov hands over some iCal information to France the West might be able to look at Russia's military Communications one Russian newspaper said that this blow to telegram threatens to be a blow to Russia with parval durov's arrest Western
intelligence Services could obtain The Messengers encryption Keys a newspaper in Moscow said that telegram might become a tool of NATO if paval durov is forced to obey the French intelligence Services it went on to write that telegram chats contain a huge amount of vitally important strategic information by the way these stories are making headlines right now because people in Russia are freaking out this includes the Kremlin as it has instructed all officials and law enforcement agencies to delete their telegram chats the same could be happening in Russia's military and its intelligence Community the threat to
Russia is a little bit nuanced though because even telegram itself doesn't have the encryption keys of chats at least it's not supposed to because that's not how endtoend encryption works the keys are supposed to be stored on the devices themselves but theoretically he could make it a lot easier for Western intelligence agencies to Infiltrate The System the telegram CEO has detailed knowledge about how the app works including its potential weak points giving this information could very well get him out of prison still we should also cover why the French authorities arrested dorov in the first
place the country has mysteriously awarded him citizenship 3 years earlier but putting him in prison seems like a very rude way to welcome him back apparently the French government's relationship with him soured the country's center for the fight against cyber crime as well as its antifraud national office launched an investigation against the entrepreneur durov has been accused of a total of 12 charges which mostly have to do with the lack of content moderation on his platform France's public prosecutor claimed that telegram was used for things like drug trafficking fraud and child sexual abuse According to
some legal views an owner of a platform is responsible for facilitating this on top of this durov has been accused of rejecting legal requests from authorities apparently France wanted to Monitor and intercept Communications of certain users on the platform which telegram didn't cooperate with all of this adds up to potentially 20 years in prison but this case has gotten a lot of heat one of durov's lawyers said that the legal theories behind it make no sense normally you don't prosecute businessmen for what consumers do with their product he compared it to blaming car manufacturers for
Road accidents or for people transporting drugs this is also the angle that many Russian commentators are taking an analyst on a popular TV show said that all these accusations against durov sound absurd accusing him of all the crimes that are committed on his platform is like accusing president macron of all the crimes that happen in France it's the same logic it's also very unpopular with free speech activists who see the arrest as an attack on differing opinions for example on musk has posted multiple tweets criticizing the government in Paris for the arrest and calling for
the release of the entrepreneur the American whistleblower Edward Snowden Who currently lives in Russia for safety said that it was an assault on the basic human rights of speech and Association one of the arguments is that France wants to force telegram to give up endtoend encryption if France succeeds other Western countries might follow the flip side of this is that the government could see your messages whenever they wanted to including content that's perfectly legal people on the free speech and libertarian Camp hate this idea as it's an attack on privacy also it could make the
government way too powerful there are actually some concerning parallels with Russia itself its internet Watchdog the rosamor was originally created to fight terrorism and extremism now it's used by the Kremlin to hunt down political opposition the line between content moderation and online censorship is pretty vague the fear is that the French and other Western governments are trying to do the same government agencies in the US have already been caught trying to suppress unwanted information on Twitter before it was acquired by musk with telegram people are saying there's a similar motive the app hosts some major
communication channels for opposition political groups mostly on the right they form a threat to some governments including the one of French president macron telegram channels also played a role in the recent UK riots where they helped to organize right-wing groups the UK government has been trying to arrest people for their social media posts but it can't do that on telegram because of the encryption at least not yet because that could change after the court case in France telegram is also a place with a lot of pro-russian propaganda regarding the Ukraine war in a conflict both
sides usually downplay their own losses and exacerbate those of the other a key part of the information war is shielding your public from the other side just like Russia is blocking Western media Outlets the West is trying to block Russian media Outlets telegram has also served as the main platform for Hamas in the Israel Gaza War it has played a key role in forming the worldwide anti-israel movement because a lot of the graphic footage from Gaza has spread through the app the Israeli government has asked telegram to remove herass Affiliated accounts in exciting violence against
Israel but this is not yet waterproof so there's also some pressure from the Israeli government to tighten control over the app this foreign interest in the app is not new at all in an interview with Tucker Carlson pavl durov also claimed that the FBI tried to hire one of the telegram developers to install a back door in the app's encryption the plan didn't succeed but it just shows the interest that intelligence agencies have in the messenger there are several motivations for the FBI to one access as it is important for both domestic and foreign intelligence
the app played a key role in the January 6th riots but as we discussed before it also has relevance in the Ukraine war with all of this in mind we can raise some doubts whether the arrest was truly about things like fraud and drug trafficking French president macron has denied everything saying on X that it was not in any way a political decision and that his country is deeply committed to freedom of expression and communication clearly not everyone is convinced by this the Russian government used the event to the fullest for a PR win the
Russian Embassy in France has condemned the arrest asking the authorities to clarify the reasons for the detention and to provide for the protection of Mr durov's rights Russian officials wanted to prove a point namely that there are double standards internationally they're saying that when Russia does things like this it gets criticized for not having free speech and democracy but that France can get away with it scot-free a human rights official in Russia claimed that the real reason for arresting pvl durov was to shut down telegram a platform where you can discover the truth about what's
happening in the world everyone who strives for free speech protests this this is obviously hypocritical because Russia is doing exactly the same with websites like X still rhetoric like this is worsening ties between Moscow and Paris their relations have reached new lows and it was already very bad to begin with France's president maon was the first Western leader that didn't rule out sending troops to Ukraine because of this he was already portrayed as a bad guy in the Russian media anyways there's a chance that this discussion about free speech and politics turns out to be
Irrelevant for the story if durov manages to get away by giving some valuable information about Russian Communications the rest of the messenger service could remain untouched and the theories just keep going there are some completely different theories as well that deserve to be mentioned perhaps dorov thought that the arrest warrant didn't amount to anything because he believed that the charges wouldn't hold in court he could have just traveled to Paris like he has done many times before believing it would be no problem this would make sense if we look at the official reaction from telegram
the company has said that their CEO has nothing to hide and that it's absurd to blame him for what other people choose to do with the service but risking 20 years in jail just to prove a point seems pretty wild to me an even Wilder theory is that his girlfriend convinced him to go to Paris on a holiday and that she might have been a spy she's a bit of a mysterious figure but according to her social media posts she went with him on his recent trips we also know that this mysterious girlfriend has been
taken into custody in Paris and that her family hasn't been able to locate her since maybe the French government or some other intelligence agency hired her to trick durov into going to Paris or maybe the Russian government wanted to crazy as it sounds things like this can happen with people as important as the telegram CEO in the end only time will tell what was truly the motivation behind this arrest this is one of those weird stories that only get more complicated as you dive in deeper if the man actually ends up in prison or not
will tell us a lot so that's something to pay attention to but we shouldn't expect to get to know the details all at once because there could be some high stake intelligence stuff going on if Western agencies manage to break into Russian Communications or if telegram gets censored it probably won't make headlines now before we get into that I quickly wanted to answer a question I recently got asked a lot of you guys want to start a YouTube channel but you are camera shy or just not comfortable putting your face out there in fact I
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