pavel Durov -This spring at the Salon des Batailles in the Hôtel de Crillon, Nicolas Lerner, head French intelligence, asked me to ban conservative voices in Romania ahead of elections. I refused. We didn’t block protesters in Russia, Belarus, or Iran. We won’t start doing it in Europe.

Pavel Durov -A Western European government (guess which 🥖) approached Telegram asking us to silence conservative voices in Romania ahead of today’s presidential elections. I flatly refused. Telegram will not restrict the freedoms of Romanian users or block their political channels.

Pavel Durov -You can’t “defend democracy” by destroying democracy. You can’t “fight election interference” by interfering with elections. You either have freedom of speech and fair elections — or you don’t. And the Romanian people deserve both. 🇷🇴

Chay Bowes- Telegram founder Pavel Durov continued to accuse French intelligence services of trying to influence European politics via Telegram. According to him, they weren't only in Romania.

"French foreign intelligence confirmed that they met with me — supposedly to combat terrorism and child pornography. In fact, child pornography was not even mentioned. They wanted the IP of terrorist suspects in France, but their main goal was always geopolitics: Romania, Moldova, Ukraine," the head of Telegram said