Russia's 'Elon Musk' with 100 biological children! Who is Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram who was arrested in France

For different people, Pavel Durov has different labels. For some he is a programming genius, for others a billionaire entrepreneur, for others the Kremlin's grandfather, but also a fighter for free speech. But for at least 100 children, it is also their biological father.

The founder of Telegram, who was arrested in France last weekend, is included in the list of "new boys" of the technology world, such as Mark Zuckenberg, Jack Dorsey or Elon Musk. But unlike the others, he also has the "vice" of having children. In July of this year, he admitted that he was the father of 100 children, thanks to sperm donation over the past 15 years.

With a fortune of $9.15 billion, according to Bloomberg, and a stack of passports and addresses, Durov has lived his entire life without borders, always on the move trying to escape the watchful eye of governments, democratic or otherwise. .

But now Durov is in trouble, because he has made it possible in his application, Telegram, for people to communicate in complete security, even outside the control of the company's own employees, which has raised concerns for the national security of many countries within European Union.

Mathematical geniuses

As he himself admitted in an interview with Tucker Carlson this year, Durov was born in 1984 in the Soviet Union, but moved to Turin, Italy when he was 4 years old. His family moved back to Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union, after his father was offered a job at St. Petersburg State University.

Durov has said that he and his older brother, Nikolai, were mathematical geniuses from an early age. Nikolai even participated in television shows as a child, where he solved difficult equations live, while he has also won several gold medals in the International Mathematical Olympiad. "We were both very passionate about coding," said Durov.

He stated that when his family returned to Russia, he brought an IBM computer with them from Italy, becoming one of the lucky few in Russia who could learn programming.

Russia's Zuckerberg

Thanks to his skills, when he was 21, Durov created Vkontakte (VK), a social media that quickly became known as the Facebook of Russia, and Durov was the equivalent of Mark Zuckerberg. But Durov fell out with the Kremlin much faster than Zuckerberg did with Washington.

When protesters began using VK to organize demonstrations in Kiev against pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovich in 2013, Durov said the Kremlin asked him to hand over the personal data of Ukrainian users. "We decided to refuse, and that was not welcomed by the Russian government," Durov told Carlson.

This decision sealed his fate in the company. He later resigned as CEO, opening his company's doors to Vladimir Putin. The entrepreneur sold all his shares, leaving Russia with millions of dollars. Today, VK is under the control of the Russian state.

"The goal was never to get rich, everything revolved around achieving freedom. And as much as possible, my mission in life is to allow others to be free as well," said Durov. "I don't take orders from anyone."

"It's all in vain!"

While Zuckerberg chose to buy WhatsApp on his journey to build the social media empire known as Meta, Durov decided to build the messaging app himself, despite the market being overpopulated. But according to him, none of them were good enough. "It doesn't matter how many such applications there are, if they are all useless," Durov declared in 2015 at a technology conference.

Durov said that the experience with the Kremlin was the main impetus that led him to create Telegram, which is now headquartered in Dubai.

He and his brother wanted to build something that would keep the eyes of governments away from people. And as time proved, the app's obsession with privacy was enjoyed by the hundreds of millions of users who downloaded and used Telegram — among them the terrorists who planned the Paris attacks in November 2015.

After that tragedy, Durov, who preferred to stay in the shadows, launched a public outing campaign to assure users that Telegram is not the WahtsApp of terrorists, but only the most secure communication application. "You can't protect yourself from criminals and open the door to the government," Durov said in a 2016 interview with CNN.

The battle with the Kremlin and the doubts of critics

Telegram's refusal to de-encrypt messages between users has put it in front of governments around the world, a battle stronger than the one with the Kremlin.

In 2018, Moscow tried to ban the use of the app after Durov refused to provide the decryption codes for the messages. But Durov broke this barrier and in 2020, the ban was lifted.

In the following years, Telegram became one of the few social media applications operating in Russia without restrictions. Today, it is even the preferred means of communication for many Russian government officials.

Durov's critics say it's suspicious that Telegram could operate so freely in Russia without reaching some sort of deal with the Kremlin, a charge Durov has repeatedly denied.

Before he was arrested in Paris, Durov was in Azerbaijan at the same time as President Vladimir Putin, who was on a two-day official visit there. But Kremlin spokesman Dimitry Peskov said there had not been a meeting between the two.

Although Durov has publicly turned his back on his country, the Russian government began to move immediately after his arrest.