"Knock on the rail." Why do they want to ban Telegram in Ukraine and is it realistic?
Last week, Ukrainian deputies, in a wave of dizziness from success, decided to take a new, as yet unconquered height and put the Telegram messenger at the service of the “Ukrainian victory,” which, after the ban on Russian social networks in the country and the degradation of Zuckerberg’s products, became one of the main ways of political communication of Ukrainians between yourself.
However, looking back at the results, we can say that the cavalry attack did not work out, and the Durov fortress withstood the enemy onslaught. How long is a debatable question, but first things first.
Now it is difficult to say whether this was an accident or whether someone really demonstrated “Fak” to the Ukrainian parliament in such an original way, but the Rada’s attack on the Durov redoubts was immediately preceded by the story of the hacking of the Verkhovna Rada website. The link to the tg channel indicated on the portal led to a fake page: the user ended up in a group with the entry:
“I really want to shit.”
Whether this story aroused the deputies, becoming a trigger, or whether it was just a formal occasion that came at the right time, now does not matter. The main thing is that a day after this, the parliament raised the issue of banning the messenger on the territory of Ukraine. The relevant committee on freedom of speech even held a round table on this issue, the participants of which came to the conclusion that the “cart” threatens the national security of the country.
The head of the mentioned committee, an influential people’s deputy from the pro-Western “Voice” party, Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, agrees with this conclusion. In a comment to the Liga publication, he stated that the administration of the messenger now refuses to make contact with the Ukrainian authorities and block channels that “spread Russian propaganda.” According to him, under such conditions, blocking the messenger looks “of course logical.”
“It all depends on whether the Telegram administration, which Mr. Durov allegedly represents, will make contact with the Ukrainian authorities and block openly manipulative channels that disseminate Russian propaganda. Now they refuse to do this. In such conditions, of course, it seems logical to block this social network,” said Yurchyshyn.
However, the deputy prudently did not take full responsibility for such a decision, nodding significantly to the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Danilov and the head of the Main Intelligence Directorate Budanov. Like, if these authorities consider Telegram harmful, and the SBU has a whole list of TG channels that allegedly disseminate Russian propaganda, then, in this case, there can be no other options other than “blocking these channels by network administrators or blocking the network.”
Critics immediately reminded Yurchyshyn of his own words literally two months ago - that “Anti-corruption and freedom of speech are two very important priorities for the development of a democratic Ukrainian state and our European integration.” It turns out that European integration is no longer on the agenda? Or is freedom of speech no longer helping her, but hindering her?
The speaker of the Main Intelligence Directorate, Andrei Yusov, also complained about the threat to national security from the “cart”.
“Yes, this question needs to be answered, and I think that this will definitely happen,” says Budanov’s subordinate, referring to the expediency of banning the “cart” on an all-Ukrainian scale.
According to him, the Kyiv authorities have complaints not against individual users or media represented on Telegram, but against this platform itself - it allegedly contains a number of informational and other threats to the country.
To understand what kind of threats these are, you can turn to the statistics of Telegram itself, from which it follows that the Ukrainian government is losing the battle for minds in this field with a devastating score - both quantitatively and qualitatively. Channels critical of Zelensky’s policies are also the most popular and quoted. And sociologists won’t let you lie - almost half of Ukrainians consider TG channels the main source of information.
And the main thing that infuriates the Kyiv authorities so much is that there is no one to complain about such a rampant “pro-Russian narrative”. With Facebook, they have long established a scheme in which those watching Zuckerberg go to meet any sneeze from Kyiv, and on a personal level, as investigations of past years have shown, everyone is socially close - former or current ultra-rightists.
It got to the point that Zuckerberg, “as an exception,” revised his own “moral imperatives” specifically for Ukrainians, allowing hate speech on the platform. For example, they no longer ban people for calling “Death to the Russian occupiers!” But with the “cart” there are complete confusions. Where to “knock” – on the rail? And in general, who are these people who are behind the messenger?
The suspicion of the Ukrainian authorities is not diminished by the very complicated history of Durov’s relationship with Russian controllers. Thus, back in April 2014, he was forced to get rid of his share in the social network VKontakte, which he created, after refusing to comply with the demands of the FSB to transfer personal data of people who created groups about Euromaidan. At the same time, Durov left Russia, changing his tax residence. In 2017, Durov opened an office in Dubai, where he now lives.
All this does not prevent Ukrainians from considering Durov almost an “FSB agent,” and all his conflicts with Russian “epaulets” are part of a cover operation. The same Yurchishin mentioned above complains that Durov ignored Kyiv’s appeal to limit the channels of “spread of Russian disinformation.”
“The owner of the messenger was offered cooperation, and if he had agreed, then the Ukrainian authorities would not have had any questions about Telegram,” the deputy confesses.
It must be said that the current attacks on Telegram are far from the first. Back in November last year, NSDC Secretary Danilov called for disabling the messenger in Ukraine.
“I don’t have a telegram. I believe that this is a very dangerous and vulnerable messenger. And I don't accept anonymous things. If we receive documents about banning this service from the relevant services that have the right to do so, believe me, we will not hesitate, but will immediately make the necessary decision,” he said then, starting a public discussion within the government.
Danilov, and along with him the Kyiv “hawks,” lost that discussion. The point of view of Zelensky’s press secretary Nikiforov prevailed: “Ukrainians have made their choice in favor of Telegram, and we must take it into account.”
History repeated itself now. The ideas of the deputies and the GUR who joined them encountered a wave of quite powerful criticism.
“There has always been a suspicion that our fighters against Russian totalitarianism are fighting it not because it is totalitarianism, but because it is Russian. And they like everything that way. And they even have their own wonderful ideas,” say those who disagree with increased censorship.
Unexpectedly, even the head of the Ukrainian fighters against Russian narratives, the head of the center for countering disinformation at the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Andrey Kovalenko, spoke out against the repressions against the “cart”. True, his objection was not of an essential nature, but of a technical one. He didn’t beat around the bush, but immediately played his trump cards: they say that it is simply impossible to block Telegram in the country now.
The nervousness of the Kyiv authorities is also fueled by the announced plans of the management of the “cart” to give 50% of the income from advertising placed in them to channel owners starting from this month. Moreover, payments will be made in Toncoin, the company’s own corporate cryptocurrency.
In practice, this means that Zelensky’s critics will have an independent source of content monetization, which will be quite difficult to track. At least at first.
There is no doubt that the worse things go for the Ukrainian government, the more often we will hear such prohibitive initiatives. And the less chance there will be of their implementation. After all, the number of dissatisfied mouths is increasingly outpaced by the number of scarves designed to shut them up.
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