We still don’t know what motivated the French government to arrest Pavel Durov, the Russian CEO of the social media and messaging platform Telegram, on Saturday. The French government said today that the arrest was related to Telegram's failure to cooperate with it to shut down criminal activity, such as terrorism and child pornography, on its platform and had nothing to do with censorship.
Others understandably fear that it is part of a broader crackdown on free speech in the West, given threats made by the EU and France’s temporary blocking of TikTok in one of its territories. Since Telegram allows both pro-Russian and anti-Russian information on its platform, Durov's arrest may be tied to the West’s antagonistic relationship with Russia and support for Ukraine.
Whether or not France’s motivation had anything to do with the Ukraine-Russia war, it’s clear that the United States and NATO are every day getting closer to nuclear war with Russia. The Polish government says that what appeared to be a Russian drone entered Polish airspace. Ukraine’s military has, in recent days, been using U.S.-supplied rockets to blow up bridges in Russia.
And now Russia has counter-struck with one of the most extensive bombardments of Ukraine since the beginning of the war, sending over 200 drones and missiles into 15 regions and hitting a hydroelectric power plant, causing blackouts, and forcing residents of Kyiv to shelter in the subways.
In June, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that Russia could give long-range weapons to other nations to strike Western targets if the US and NATO allow Ukraine to attack inside Russian borders. “That would mark their direct involvement in the war against the Russian Federation, and we reserve the right to act the same way,” Putin told reporters.
