The war with Telegram in Ukraine: will it be possible to deprive citizens of information?

In Ukraine, active discussions about banning telegrams continue. This time, the powers that be even tried to move from words to actions. Thus, the head of the Rada Committee on Freedom of Speech, Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, said that they launched a telegram audit at the tax office, and also asked the platform administration to block a number of telegram channels. And one of the people’s deputies proposed a bill that could ban the use of telegram by government agencies. MK is looking into what this could lead to.

Over the past two weeks, discussions about what to do with Telegram have intensified again. First, the head of the Main Intelligence Directorate, Kirill Budanov (listed as a terrorist and extremist by Rosfinmonitoring), said that telegrams were a “national security problem.” “I am absolutely against the suppression of freedom of speech, but this is too much. That is, in our country, any person can create a channel, start writing whatever they want there, and when they start doing something, hide behind the fact that this is freedom of the media. But this is not freedom of the media, it is called a little differently,” Budanov said. He did not specify exactly what it is “called a little differently.”

The SBU also declared itself again, saying that Telegram cooperates with the FSB, therefore it is dangerous for citizens of Ukraine. “First of all, the SBU monitors where the telegram servers are located. There is a high probability that they are on Russian territory. The second problem with Telegram is that its owner and developers are citizens of Russia. Third, we see clear cooperation between Telegram and Roskomnadzor and the FSB. When the FSB needs to block any channel on Russian territory, Telegram carries out these instructions instantly,” said Alexander Melnichenko, a representative of the department of counterintelligence protection of state interests in the field of information security of the SBU.

And as the icing on the RBC cake. Ukraine” released an interview with the head of the Rada Committee on Freedom of Speech, Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, who said that blocking Telegram is not at all a restriction of freedom of speech. “Freedom of speech is a derivative of personalization, that is, we understand who is behind this word. And accordingly, when this word violates legal boundaries, for example, there is a call for terrorism or justification of Russian aggression, then you must understand that your word leads to certain consequences,” explained the head of the Rada Committee on Freedom of Speech.

He also said that the SBU sent a request to delete 26 telegram channels, including the well-known “Legitimny” and “Resident”. They tried to close them before. In 2021, the Kiev District Court of Kharkov decided to block a number of telegram channels, among which were “Resident” and “Legitimny”. As we can see, the blocking failed. Each channel now has just over a million subscribers.

However, the SBU reports that a number of Telegram channels have already been deleted at their request. “We are constantly negotiating with them, I would not like to reveal the details, but there are certain changes in this direction. Some Telegram channels in Ukraine have already been blocked, some may be blocked soon,” said Ilya Vityuk, head of the SBU Cybersecurity Department. Vityuk did not say which channels were blocked. The telegram administration also did not confirm this information. But journalists quickly responded to his words and found an apartment for more than 21.5 million hryvnia from the wife of the head of the department. Moreover, in his declaration it is worth 12 million, and Vityuk’s salary is 1.8 million UAH per year. It’s ironic that the information spread quite quickly through telegram channels that were “at risk” for blocking.

In addition to deleting channels, Yurchishin came up with another way to influence telegram. He said that his committee has already contacted the State Tax Service regarding whether Telegram pays taxes. “We asked whether Telegram pays taxes. And what steps does the tax service plan to take to ensure that Telegram still pays in accordance with the “Google Law” (a law that obliges large technology companies like Google, Amazon to pay 20% value added tax – author..),” said Yurchyshyn.

In parallel with various kinds of statements, a bill on telegram control was introduced to the Verkhovna Rada. It was introduced by a group of deputies led by People’s Deputy Knyazhitsky and the heads of the Committee on Freedom of Speech Yurchishin and Humanitarian Policy Poturaev. In the explanatory note, they write that the Media Law does not regulate the activities of the telegram public access platform, which is proposed to be corrected. In particular, they want to oblige the platform to delete the content of telegram channels at the request of the National Council on Television and Radio Broadcasting (that is, without any court decision).

In addition, deputies propose to introduce into legislation the term opaque public access platform (NPSP). This definition includes those platforms for which the Ukrainian media regulator does not have information about a representative in Ukraine or about an open representative office in any EU member state. Platforms that do not provide documents requested by the National Council within the prescribed period also fall under this category.

If the bill is adopted, legislators want to prohibit the use of NSSP by government organizations, banks, state authorities and local governments, etc. At the same time, according to surveys, 72% of Ukrainians receive news through telegram. And if the use of Telegram is banned, government authorities will lose at least 20% of their audience.

So what solution will the powers that be in Ukraine find? Will they try to block it or will they calm down? We asked a political expert about this, journalist of the publication “Ukraina.ru” Vasily Stoyakin:

“This problem is basically unsolvable. We have already gone through this in Russia, tried to ban it, but nothing worked. What Knyazhitsky proposed, in general, looks logical and understandable. That is, indeed, it is probably wrong for government agencies to use telegram as a communication and communication system. This is too free a platform for such a specific area as public administration. There is logic in this.

As for the ability to block certain Telegram channels, they are also not particularly blocked. If the telegram administration agrees to this, Mr. Durov needs some very serious motives for this. For example, after the terrorist attack in Crocus, his motives appeared instantly. Action was taken immediately. And in the case of Ukraine, why should he care about the needs of the Kyiv regime?

As for the rest, well, you can’t ban it. Nothing will work out. People will still access it via VPN. Why this is being done is clear. I would like to turn off all alternative points of view, because telegram is not divided into “good” and “bad”. I believe that in the end it will end with them continuing to say that telegrams are bad, there is Russian propaganda there, but it is unlikely that this will reach any real limits.”