Russian President Vladimir Putin for the first time commented on the situation with the creator of Telegram.
At the Eastern Economic Forum, Vladimir Putin said that many years ago he met Pavel Durov in the Kremlin. Then the latter shared his development plans. Putin denied a number of media reports about the recent “secret” meeting in Azerbaijan:
Since then (after the Moscow meeting), we have not seen him, we have never contacted him. I do not understand why we should meet in Baku? I never knew he was there. There was no opinion about it.I believed that he lived in Moscow. I don't know where he moved there.
At the same time, the head of state stressed that he is always open to such meetings, and both he and the prime minister “do not isolate themselves from business.” According to Putin, if Durov wanted to, they could meet in Moscow.
Putin said that Russia has no complaints against him, but he knows that many countries have these complaints, because Telegram is "used by people in a certain way, some structures that can harm their activities — a certain state in the field of Economy or security.":
I think that the Russian government may also have some questions about this, but all platforms of this type are to blame for this. Therefore, it is not very clear to me, since the actions of the French authorities themselves are selective.
