Recently, Durav wrote on his Telegram channel that users' right to privacy, in light of the war in Ukraine, is "sacred, now more than ever." As the war in Ukraine rages, the messaging app Telegram has emerged as the go-to place for unfiltered live war updates for both Ukrainian refugees and increasingly isolated Russians alike. However, the perpetrators of such frauds are now adopting new methods and technologies to defraud the investors. At the start of 2018, the company attempted to launch an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) which would enable it to enable payments (and earn the cash that comes from doing so). The initial signals were promising, especially given Telegram’s user base is already fairly crypto-savvy. It raised an initial tranche of cash – worth more than a billion dollars – to help develop the coin before opening sales to the public. Unfortunately, third-party sales of coins bought in those initial fundraising rounds raised the ire of the SEC, which brought the hammer down on the whole operation. In 2020, officials ordered Telegram to pay a fine of $18.5 million and hand back much of the cash that it had raised. "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."
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