The messenger’s co-founder’s comments come as the post-Soviet republic is heading to the polling stations
Writing on X on Sunday, Durov said the approach came about a year ago, while he was under judicial supervision in France following his arrest at a Paris airport. He claimed that intelligence services contacted him through an intermediary and asked Telegram to remove a number of Moldovan channels before a presidential vote.
According to St Petersburg native Durov, Telegram did delete some flagged channels that clearly violated its own policies. But he said the intermediary later relayed a more troubling message: French intelligence had offered to “say good things” to the judge in charge of his case in exchange for wider cooperation.
“This was unacceptable on several levels,” Durov wrote, adding that if the agency did contact the judge, it would amount to interference in the judicial process — and if it didn’t, it meant exploiting his legal jeopardy to influence political developments abroad.
Durov said that shortly afterward, Telegram received a second list of “problematic” Moldovan channels. Unlike the first batch, he insisted, nearly all of these accounts were legitimate and fully compliant with Telegram’s rules.
Their only common trait, he said, was that they voiced political positions disliked by the Moldovan and French governments. “We refused to act on this request,” he wrote.
The allegations come as Moldovans head to the polls in a high-stakes parliamentary election. President Maia Sandu’s pro-EU Action and Solidarity Party (PAS) is facing off against the Patriotic Electoral Bloc (BEP), which campaigns for Moldova’s constitutional neutrality and accuses the government of suppressing dissent.
In recent weeks, election officials barred two opposition parties over alleged foreign funding, adding to a list that already included the banned Victory Bloc and the dissolved SOR Party.
Opposition groups accuse Sandu of tilting the playing field by restricting polling stations in Russia, where hundreds of thousands of Moldovans live, while opening hundreds across the EU — many in small towns. They also point to the closure of dozens of media outlets critical of the government.
Commenting on Durov’s claims, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the revelations confirmed what Moscow had long alleged. “The West operates without conscience on all fronts,” she said.
Durov, who also holds French citizenship in addition to his primary Russian, was arrested in August 2024 and charged with complicity in crimes linked to Telegram users, including extremism and child abuse. He was later released on €5 million bail but placed under judicial supervision. He said the French attempt to link that case to Moldovan politics was “a pattern we have also observed elsewhere, including in Romania.”
Durov insisted Telegram would not comply with political censorship. “Telegram is committed to freedom of speech and will not remove content for political reasons. I will continue to expose every attempt to pressure Telegram into censoring our platform,” he wrote.
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