13 April: activists from Vesna ("Spring") movement in St Petersburg deliver paper airplanes, the symbol of the now banned Telegram app, to the city's Roskomnadzor office. (c) David Frenkel. All rights reserved. On Friday, the internet messenger Telegram was banned in Russia. The first chapter of this story, developing at its own pace since June 2017, ended in a blitzkrieg by Russia’s internet regulator in a Moscow court.
Over these eight months, Telegram has increased its user-base from six million to 15m users — catching up WhatsApp, Viber and Skype in terms of popularity in Russia. Indeed, in October 2017, Russia became the world leader in downloads with 12.5m, accounting for downloads across US, Germany, Italy, Spain and Ukraine all together.
Undoubtedly, one of the reasons for this surge in popularity was the company’s public refusal to give Russian security services access to its users’ correspondence. This became possible after the Russian internet regulator, after several weeks of active correspondence and public statements, included Telegram — against established procedure — on the so-called “Register of Organisers of Information Distribution”, i.e. social networks and other similar applications, in June 2017.
