For Oleksandra Tsekhanovska, head of the Hybrid Warfare Analytical Group at the Kyiv-based Ukraine Crisis Media Center, the effects are both near- and far-reaching. Artem Kliuchnikov and his family fled Ukraine just days before the Russian invasion. The company maintains that it cannot act against individual or group chats, which are โprivate amongst their participants,โ but it will respond to requests in relation to sticker sets, channels and bots which are publicly available. During the invasion of Ukraine, Pavel Durov has wrestled with this issue a lot more prominently than he has before. Channels like Donbass Insider and Bellum Acta, as reported by Foreign Policy, started pumping out pro-Russian propaganda as the invasion began. So much so that the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council issued a statement labeling which accounts are Russian-backed. Ukrainian officials, in potential violation of the Geneva Convention, have shared imagery of dead and captured Russian soldiers on the platform. On Telegramโs website, it says that Pavel Durov โsupports Telegram financially and ideologically while Nikolai (Duvov)โs input is technological.โ Currently, the Telegram team is based in Dubai, having moved around from Berlin, London and Singapore after departing Russia. Meanwhile, the company which owns Telegram is registered in the British Virgin Islands. "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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