Russia's Federal Security ‌ Service announced this after claiming Telegram allegedly failed to remove chats and channels that Ukrainian intelligence used to coordinate attacks against Russia.

Durov has denied the accusations, saying the Russian government is creating baseless claims to restrict Telegram, weaken online privacy and suppress freedom of expression.

The FSB charged Pavel Durov with aiding terrorism and issued a warrant for his arrest, accusing him of letting Ukrainian intelligence use the app to coordinate attacks inside Russia.

Durov, who lives in Dubai and hasn't set foot in Russia in years, has been unbothered from the start.

When the charges first landed, he said Moscow was inventing pretexts to choke off free speech and called it the act of a state afraid of its own people.

The charge carries up to 15 years, not that anyone expects him to show up and serve them. 

The timing is almost too on the nose, landing right as the Kremlin herds Russians onto MAX, its own state-built app wired straight into FSB surveillance.

An international warrant for a man the Kremlin can't touch, whose crime was refusing to hand over the keys.

The reason was the refusal of Telegram’s administration to delete a number of channels, chats, and bots at the request of the FSB.

Russian special services published a video in which they presented as evidence screenshots of conversations allegedly discussing sabotage activities on Russian territory.

Users immediately noticed that the interface in the screenshots, supposedly from Telegram, is identical to the FSB-controlled social network VK, but not Telegram.

The official Telegram account responded to these false accusations by the Kremlin’s special services by publishing a photo of Pavel Durov making a characteristic gesture.