Just days after Russia invaded Ukraine, Durov wrote that Telegram was "increasingly becoming a source of unverified information," and he worried about the app being used to "incite ethnic hatred." Telegram was co-founded by Pavel and Nikolai Durov, the brothers who had previously created VKontakte. VK is Russiaโs equivalent of Facebook, a social network used for public and private messaging, audio and video sharing as well as online gaming. In January, SimpleWeb reported that VK was Russiaโs fourth most-visited website, after Yandex, YouTube and Googleโs Russian-language homepage. In 2016, Forbesโ Michael Solomon described Pavel Durov (pictured, below) as the โMark Zuckerberg of Russia.โ The picture was mixed overseas. Hong Kongโs Hang Seng Index fell 1.6%, under pressure from U.S. regulatory scrutiny on New York-listed Chinese companies. Stocks were more buoyant in Europe, where Frankfurtโs DAX surged 1.4%. "We as Ukrainians believe that the truth is on our side, whether it's truth that you're proclaiming about the war and everything else, why would you want to hide it?," he said.
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