Russia Drops Ban on Telegram Messenger Used for Virus Alerts

(Bloomberg) -- Russia’s communications watchdog dropped its failed efforts to block Pavel Durov’s Telegram messenger after lawmakers said it was a vital resource for informing to the public about emergencies such as the coronavirus epidemic.

The watchdog Roskomnadzor reached the decision together with the General Prosecutor’s office after Durov offered to cooperate against terrorism and extremism, according to a statement on the regulator’s website Thursday. Russian lawmakers filed a bill earlier this week to lift the restrictions.

Earlier this month, Durov said Telegram is preventing dozens of thousands attempts to post extremist content and developed “mechanisms to prevent terror acts across the globe” without breaching user privacy. He didn’t immediately comment on the decision Thursday.

A Moscow court ordered telecommunications companies to block Telegram in Russia in April 2018 for refusing to comply with demands to provide the Federal Security Service with encryption keys to read messages. However, the company thwarted efforts by Russia’s communications regulator to enforce the ban, including by changing IP-addresses to evade blocking.

The ban on Telegram had been flouted widely, even by government entities including the Foreign Ministry and Moscow’s health department.

The decision shows Russia “is strong enough to forgive,” lawmaker Fedot Tumusov, who’d drafted the bill to lift restrictions, said by phone. “The state must be strong, and if it makes a decision, it should carry it through to the end. But if it hasn’t succeeded in two years, it should drop it.”

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.