The Security Service of Ukraine said in a tweet that it was able to effectively target Russian convoys near Kyiv because of messages sent to an official Telegram bot account called "STOP Russian War." 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.” Artem Kliuchnikov and his family fled Ukraine just days before the Russian invasion. Some privacy experts say Telegram is not secure enough 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.
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