Telegram was co-founded by Pavel and Nikolai Durov, the brothers who had previously created VKontakte. VK is Russia’s 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 Russia’s fourth most-visited website, after Yandex, YouTube and Google’s Russian-language homepage. In 2016, Forbes’ Michael Solomon described Pavel Durov (pictured, below) as the “Mark Zuckerberg of Russia.” "Russians are really disconnected from the reality of what happening to their country," Andrey said. "So Telegram has become essential for understanding what's going on to the Russian-speaking world." After fleeing Russia, the brothers founded Telegram as a way to communicate outside the Kremlin's orbit. They now run it from Dubai, and Pavel Durov says it has more than 500 million monthly active users. But the Ukraine Crisis Media Center's Tsekhanovska points out that communications are often down in zones most affected by the war, making this sort of cross-referencing a luxury many cannot afford. Update March 8, 2022: EFF has clarified that Channels and Groups are not fully encrypted, end-to-end, updated our post to link to Telegram’s FAQ for Cloud and Secret chats, updated to clarify that auto-delete is available for group and channel admins, and added some additional links.
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