SOFREP is on Telegram, joining the ‘Information Terrorists’ plaguing Russia

Given the news blackout in Russia on anything critical of the Putin regime and the difficulty in getting news into that country that doesn’t pass through the filters of state-controlled media like Sputnik, Russia Today(RT), and Pradva.

Putin slammed a law through that makes it a crime to spread false information or fake news about Russia’s armed forces or, to report anything that denigrates Russian soldiers in any way. The law also punishes statements perceived to promote restrictions that harm the country, like commentary on the sanctions. And there are serious penalties, not only in fines but up to 15 years in jail.

Russia has throttled social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for not censoring content that was critical of Russia and its invasion of Ukraine, while in Ukraine itself, the Telegram messaging app is widely used to share and pass information about the war there.

If you don’t know, Telegram is a popular messaging app in Eastern Europe begun by two Russian brothers named Pavel and Nikolai Durov(Yeah, we had suspicions about that too).  They had founded the messaging app “VK” previously but had to abandon it under pressure from Putin to share information with the government on users and messages.  Basically, Russia wanted a back door into VK to surveil its users.  The brothers refused and sold off their stake in the company and chose exile over compliance in 2014.  Telegram was originally headquartered in Berlin with distributed servers to handle its cloud-based traffic, but problems with getting residency papers for the core team required another move to register the company in the British Virgin Island and Dubai. The brothers are now said to live pretty much on the run, moving from country to country with a core team of 15-20 people.