Statement by the Chairman of Yabloko, 26.08.2024

Photo: Pavel Durov / Photo by Alexei Zotov, Kommersant

Yabloko considers the recent situation around with the detention of Pavel Durov [the founder of the Telegram messenger] to be alarming and landmark event.

The situation is reminiscent of what happened to Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, an international non-profit organisation that published US government confidential information obtained from anonymous sources.

The Internet in the 21st century is not only an objective and important factor in the real freedom, development and well-being of humanity, but also an element in the formation of a closed infrastructure for terrorism, criminal operations, drug trafficking, illegal arms trade, child pornography, and, in addition, a tool for spreading lies, political propaganda, and deliberate distortion of information through various and constantly improving instant communication systems. Certainly, this applies not only to Telegram.

The arrest of Pavel Durov in France on charges of refusing to cooperate with the authorities has once again brought to light the existing problems in the relationship between digital rights and freedoms and the restrictions necessary to ensure people’s safety and combatting crime.

Today, the world lacks effective legal mechanisms to protect people from the negative consequences of the accelerating development of digital technologies, which lead to an increase in “political entropy” and an acceleration of global disorder, expressed not only in the degradation of political institutions and procedures, but also in hidden organised crime, and different forms of extremism and terrorism.

To a large extent, this is why ensuring inalienable, critically important human rights, including freedom of dissemination of information and protection of the privacy of correspondence, is increasingly relegated to the background. The creation of such vital mechanisms is possible only on a world basis.

However, it is necessary to have at least a minimal level of interstate mutual understanding, and public trust in the state and its law enforcement agencies inside countries so that to work in this direction and find satisfactory solutions

Only then solutions protecting the life, freedom and security of people in the 21st century can be found. But for this, peace is needed, and the path to peace in the current tragic conditions is possible only through the earliest possible agreement on a ceasefire and the end of the growing armed conflict in Europe.

We hope that the French law enforcement system will treat the situation around Pavel Durov and the Telegram messenger with an understanding of the essence of the existing problems.

We wish Pavel Durov freedom.

Nikolai Rybakov,

Chairman of the Yabloko Party