It is unclear who runs the account, although Russia's official Ministry of Foreign Affairs Twitter account promoted the Telegram channel on Saturday and claimed it was operated by "a group of experts & journalists." Oleksandra Matviichuk, a Kyiv-based lawyer and head of the Center for Civil Liberties, called Durov’s position "very weak," and urged concrete improvements. 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." At this point, however, Durov had already been working on Telegram with his brother, and further planned a mobile-first social network with an explicit focus on anti-censorship. Later in April, he told TechCrunch that he had left Russia and had “no plans to go back,” saying that the nation was currently “incompatible with internet business at the moment.” He added later that he was looking for a country that matched his libertarian ideals to base his next startup. He adds: "Telegram has become my primary news source."
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