Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Olesya Orlenko
| The saga continues. See also here. |
[REGNUM] The arrest of Pavel Durov at the Paris airport was news that came like a bolt from the blue. Numerous questions arising from the incident are already being discussed in the public space. But one curious aspect has remained in the shadows for now.
The thing is that at first glance at the relevant publications in the French press, one might think that the founder of VK and Telegram is an unfamiliar figure to them. But upon closer analysis, one can see that we are witnessing a “sharp turn” in the manner in which the press covers the businessman’s personality and related topics.
The arrest warrant for Durov was issued by the Bureau for Minors Ofmin, created by the Ministry of Internal Affairs under the criminal investigation department on August 29, 2023.
The emergence of this body was a reaction to the catastrophic, in the opinion of its creators, situation in France, associated with impunity for crimes against minors and, as a consequence, with the growth of juvenile crime.
For example, every three minutes a child is sexually abused in the country. Most often, the problem of violence against children occurs within families and in educational institutions. And only 3% of complaints to the police on this matter end with the punishment of the perpetrators.
Human rights activist Lis Luffoc reports that 40% of French citizens under 25 are homeless, and orphans or children from disadvantaged families, having finished school at 18, are effectively abandoned by the state and society. At the same time, as early as the end of 2023, Ofmin employees complained about a lack of funds, which affected the poor performance of the department.
However, Ofmin had the capacity, in the absence of a government, to conduct what they say was an investigation and issue an arrest warrant for the creator of the Telegram messenger, French citizen Pavel Durov, when he arrived in his new homeland on a private flight from Azerbaijan.
The media writes that one of the officials responsible for the investigation, upon learning of his arrival in France, exclaimed: “The impunity of Telegram is over!”
At the time of the arrest, TF1 spoke with those responsible for the investigation. According to the publication, Ofmin employees were asking questions. Why did Durov decide to come to France, knowing that he was declared persona non grata? And is his visit part of some plan? But everyone is sure of one thing: the businessman and his platform are the number one criminals in the world.
Literally immediately, leading French newspapers were full of headlines like "Who is Pavel Durov?" And Le Monde literally released a machine gun burst of texts of various kinds dedicated to him. Some of them are propaganda in nature, sometimes at the level of low-quality agitation.
Thus, the text entitled “The Arrest of Pavel Durov: Defending the Rule of Law, Not an ‘Attack on Freedom of Speech’” states that Russia’s and Elon Musk’s accusations of the political nature of this arrest are groundless.
After all, according to the author of Le Monde, the rights of journalists are also violated in Russia, they also wanted to ban Telegram for the same reason as in France, and in general, the French authorities have the right, if they consider it necessary, to arrest a billionaire who came to their country for the sake of business freedom and "for pleasure". And all those who see an offense in what happened do it "maliciously". And the main proof of democracy in France is the fact that the arrested person... will be provided with a lawyer.
The fact is that, by retelling the biography of Pavel Durov over and over again, journalists are trying to disguise the fact that the personality of the creator of Telegram and VK should already be well known to attentive French readers.
In 2014, the same Le Monde wrote about his case as evidence of “Russian repression,” presenting the businessman as a defender of Ukrainian users of the VK social network. Journalistic investigations were devoted to Durov, presenting him as a mysterious, slightly eccentric, but certainly talented entrepreneur who managed to win the clash with the Kremlin and is creating a new reality.
Back in February 2024, the media welcomed (albeit with some apprehension that Musk might take advantage of this) the ECHR decision on the illegality of the FSB’s demands to provide decoding keys to Telegram.
Moreover, journalists felt the need to protect the French manufacturer in connection with the growing popularity of the messenger created by the Russian.
In 2022, Thomas Besnier, the creator of the French messaging platform Olvid, spoke in an interview about Telegram's lack of message encryption. In this regard, according to him, " to claim that this app is a 'secure' messaging service is either incompetent or dishonest... It is a social network in the style of Facebook*, which is not particularly secure." In contrast, Besnier believes, his development is the only reliable system for exchanging private messages.
And suddenly, the French media unanimously call Telegram not only a place of concentration of global organized crime, but also the main coordination point of the Russian Armed Forces.
Le Monde correspondent in Russia Benjamin Quesnel writes about this, citing mainly two pieces of evidence: publications on the Telegram channel "Rybar" and photographs of a shell with the inscription "For Durov". And Kevin Lemonnier, an expert at the French Institute of Geopolitics at the University of Paris-8, calls Telegram " the main vector of Russia's informal influence " and a means of coordinating military actions in Ukraine and Africa.
Pavel Durov's trial was scheduled for Monday, August 26.
However, the French side announced that it was extending his detention to 96 hours, without disclosing any details of the case. But Le Monde is again trying to create a background.
In the next biographical note, the arrested man is covered by the newspaper in a different tone. A darling of fortune, this rich man, according to journalists, is an introvert. He has few friends. He tries to play Robin Hood, throwing five-thousand-ruble notes from the windows of his St. Petersburg office into the crowd, and shows off the beauty of his body in photographs. But in life he is a lonely, conflict-prone person.
So, the image of a bold and elusive talent is replaced by a closed and frightened unsociable person who just needs to trust the good servants of the rule of law.
All discussions about Telegram in the rhetoric of the French media are connected with its political and strategic importance for Russia. At the same time, the French insist that the decision is not connected with politics, citing the reason for Pavel Durov's arrest as concern for the safety of children, or participation in organized fraud and terrorism.
It is worth remembering that the French president is openly ready to send troops to fight in Ukraine and that France calls “disinformation” Russia’s main weapon. In this context, everyone should believe that it will not, if given the chance, reveal information about the Telegram channels that Ukraine calls its main threat.
According to current information, Pavel Durov refuses to cooperate with the French authorities. But in the Western democratic world there are many ways to put pressure on a person. Despite the presence of a lawyer - a right that was kindly granted to the arrested person.
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