Telegram Turmoil Threatens Dominant Chronicle of the War in Ukraine

The detention of Pavel Durov, the founder of the Telegram messaging app, in Paris on Saturday has raised questions about the future of a platform that has come to define the public perception of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Russia’s invasion in 2022 helped transform Telegram from a niche communication tool for Russia’s educated classes into a global phenomenon. The app has allowed millions of people to follow battlefield developments in near real time, turned soldiers into the narrators of the conflict unfolding around them and gave both propagandists and dissidents a pulpit in the struggle for the hearts and minds of those monitoring the war.

Telegram was founded by Mr. Durov with his brother in 2013. Mr. Durov, a Russian-born French citizen, was arrested in connection with an investigation opened last month into criminal activity on the app and a lack of cooperation with law enforcement, French prosecutors said.

One in two Russian citizens use Telegram today, either to obtain information or to communicate with others, up from about 38 percent at the start of the war, according to the Levada Center, an independent Russian pollster.

Many Russians turned to the messaging app for news about the war after the Kremlin banned most other major Western social media platforms in the country, including Facebook and Instagram. The government has also shuttered the few independent newspapers, websites, and radio and television stations, and jailed hundreds of people for questioning the official narrative of the war.

About one in four Russians each day read Telegram’s public message boards, called channels, which provide a more unvarnished view of the war, according to a poll conducted by Levada in April. Five years ago, that figure was a mere 1 percent.