Ukraine has banned the use of the Telegram messaging app on official devices used by government officials, military personnel and key workers because it believes its enemy Russia may be spying on messages and users, the top security agency said on Friday.
The National Security and Defense Council announced the restrictions after Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence agency, presented the council with evidence of Russian special services’ ability to spy on the platform, it said in a statement.
However, the head of the Security Council’s counter-disinformation center, Andriy Kovalenko, said in Telegram that the restrictions apply only to official devices, not personal phones. Telegram is widely used in both Ukraine and Russia and has become a critical source of information since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. However, Ukrainian security officials have repeatedly expressed concerns about its use during the war.
Dubai-based Telegram was founded by Russian-born Pavel Durov, who left Russia in 2014 after refusing to comply with demands to shut down opposition communities on his VKontakte social media platform, which he sold. Durov was arrested upon landing in France in August as part of an investigation into crimes related to child pornography, drug trafficking and fraudulent transactions on Telegram.
The Security Council statement said Budanov provided evidence that Russian special services had access to Telegram messages, including deleted ones, as well as users’ personal data. “I have always supported and continue to support freedom of speech, but the issue of Telegram is not a matter of freedom of speech, it is a matter of national security,” Budanov said in his own statement. Following the announcement of the decision, Telegram issued a statement that it has never disclosed anyone’s data or the content of any message.
“Telegram has never provided any message data to any country, including Russia. Deleted messages are deleted forever and are technically impossible to recover,” Telegram said. It said each case of what it described as “leaked messages” turned out to be “the result of a compromised device, either through confiscation or malware.” According to the Telemetrio database, there are about 33,000 Telegram channels active in Ukraine.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who sits on the Security Council, as well as military commanders and regional and city officials regularly post updates on the war and inform about important decisions on Telegram. Ukrainian media estimates that 75% of Ukrainians use the app to communicate and found that 72% considered it a key source of information at the end of last year.
