Elon Musk replied with a laughing emoji after Telegram founder Pavel Durov mocked Moscow for branding him a terrorist, a post that drew 2.7 million views. Key Points: Musk answered Durov's me
Elon Musk replied with a laughing emoji after Telegram founder Pavel Durov mocked Moscow for branding him a terrorist, a post that drew 2.7 million views.
- Musk answered Durov's message about Russia's terrorist designation with a single laughing emoji on Friday.
- Russia's Federal Security Service charged Durov with aiding terrorist activity on Jul. 29 and issued an international arrest warrant.
- A financial watchdog added the Telegram founder to its register of terrorists and extremists a day later.
Durov posted on Jul. 30 that Russia had designated him a terrorist for refusing its demands for mass surveillance and censorship on Telegram. He noted that Russian law now bars him from publishing information on the internet, then joked that officials were confused about who can ban whom. Musk answered the next day with a single laughing emoji.
The exchange capped a week of escalation between the Telegram founder and Moscow.
Russia's Federal Security Service charged him on Jul. 29 with aiding terrorist activity, alleging Telegram failed to remove channels, chats and bots that Ukrainian intelligence used to coordinate sabotage and attacks inside the country.
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Financial watchdog Rosfinmonitoring added Durov to its register of terrorists and extremists on Jul. 30, a day after the criminal charge.
He answered with a two-panel meme that contrasted his own label against a photograph of Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov greeting Taliban representatives as respected partners. The group sat on that same Russian register from 2003.
Moscow began building official contacts with the Taliban after the group seized power in Afghanistan in 2021, even though the terrorist designation formally remained in place at the time.
Durov denies the allegations and casts the case as retaliation for refusing to weaken encryption, a position he has kept through years of pressure from several governments. Telegram argues that holding a platform or its owner responsible for user abuse is absurd.
Musk has cheered Durov before, posting under the hashtag #FreePavel after French police detained the entrepreneur at Le Bourget airport in August 2024.
Their companies also share business history. Durov announced a one-year partnership in May 2025 to bring xAI's Grok chatbot to Telegram, a deal he valued at $300 million in cash and equity.
Musk said at the time that no deal had been signed, and Durov then clarified that the two sides had agreed in principle with formalities pending. Days earlier, asked at an Oslo forum whether he was a Russian asset, the Telegram founder said he was Russian and would sooner die than become anyone's asset.
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