Last August, Pavel Durov, founder and manager of the social network Telegram, traveled to Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, at the same time when Vladimir Putin was there on an official visit.
Although Kremlin representatives denied a meeting between the two, upon returning from the trip, Pavel Durov was arrested by French authorities at Le Bourget Airport in Paris.
After a lengthy interrogation, he was charged with multiple offenses: facilitating drug trafficking, complicity in the distribution of abusive materials towards children, money laundering, organizing bank fraud, and refusing to cooperate with authorities.
Pavel Durov, born in Russia, also holds French citizenship.
The moment of his arrest, immediately after the visit to Baku, where Putin was also present, indicates a possible meeting between the two.
Currently, Pavel Durov is under judicial control. A trial date has not been set yet, and any departure from France must be approved by a judge.
Durov, Musk and conservatives from Romania
In the afternoon of May 18, the day of the presidential elections, Pavel Durov, the founder and manager of Telegram, a highly popular social network in Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic states, but also with a million users from Romania (note: Facebook has 10 million), posted a message announcing that French representatives pressured him to censor the posts of George Simion's supporters.
"A Western European government, guess which one (note: Durov adds a baguette emoji, suggesting it is obviously the French one), contacted Telegram, asking us to silence the conservative voices from Romania before today's presidential elections...", says Durov in his post, which went viral on all social networks.
Pavel Durov's first message posted on the day of the elections on the Telegram network, founded and coordinated by him. Shortly after, others followed, also posting on X/ Twitter, from where it was reshared by Elon Musk.
The authorities in Paris reacted swiftly and denied the accusations, specifying that their only contacts with Telegram were related to the investigation in which Durov is involved.
That same evening, Pavel Durov returned, this time on X/ Twitter, the network controlled by Elon Musk, who also shared the Russian's post, adding a Wow, at the beginning to emphasize the sensationalism of the report.
The next day, Durov returned with a new post on X/ Twitter: "French foreign intelligence services confirmed that they met with me - supposedly to combat terrorism and child pornography. In reality, child pornography wasn't even mentioned. They wanted the IP addresses of terrorism suspects in France, but their main goal has always been geopolitics: Romania, Moldova, Ukraine."
We do not respect Macron
From the sequence of posts, it can be observed that Pavel Durov had a plan, his objective being to instill in the public opinion the idea that France interfered in the electoral process in Romania.
Surprisingly for a candidate in the most crucial moment of the presidential campaign, George Simion, suspected of connections with Russian espionage, traveled to France two days before the second round of the election.
"I am here... to send a strong message: we love France, we love the French people, French culture, we are Latin people, just like you, and we respect your culture, your history, but we do not respect Emmanuel Macron, who tried to interfere in our elections. He did it in December, and now he's doing it again through the French ambassador, and my message is very clear: back off!", stated George Simion at a press conference.
Also, during the two days spent in France, the leader of the extremist AUR party participated in TV shows where he suggested that Macron is a dictator, continuing accusations of interference towards the authorities in Paris.
His communication line was extremely similar to that of Pavel Durov, both amplifying false information for which they provided no evidence.
A dual agenda
In March of this year, President Emmanuel Macron gave a speech that sent shivers down the Kremlin's corridors, announcing that he would extend nuclear protection to Germany and all European states, regardless of whether the US will continue to guarantee the security of the old continent.
Shortly after, a wave of criticism came from Moscow.
"This is nuclear rhetoric and France's claim to become the nuclear leader in Europe," stated Dmitry Peskov, Vladimir Putin's spokesperson.
"...this is a threat to Russia. If they consider us a threat, they convene a meeting of the heads of staff from the European countries and the UK, say that it is necessary to use nuclear weapons, prepare to use nuclear weapons against Russia, this is, of course, a threat," also declared Sergey Lavrov, Russia's Foreign Minister.
The chronological organization of events indicates that Russia seized the opportunity of the elections in Romania to attack France, accusing Emmanuel Macron, through two influential agents with huge visibility at the continental level due to the ongoing electoral process in our country, of interference and election rigging.
There are at least two clues, George Simion's trips to France and Poland, suggesting that the AUR leader had a dual agenda during the electoral campaign, a visible one, trying to become Romania's president, and a hidden one, serving Russia's interests in destabilizing Europe.
A toxic rhetoric
"Following the continuous circulation in the public space of information according to which the head of the French foreign intelligence service, Mr. Nicolas Lerner, would have made a visit to Romania, a few days before the second round of the presidential elections, to ensure the correct information of the citizens, we specify that such a visit did not take place," states a press release from the Foreign Intelligence Service, released on May 28.
Similarly, the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI) also reacted to the accusations of election interference spread by Durov and Simion, following a request from the Parliamentary Committee for the SRI's control.
"... the information circulated is false and represents a form of disinformation, emphasizing that there was no visit by the French official to Romania in 2025," states the agency's response.
The fact that the two most important intelligence services in Romania reacted to the disinformation campaign on social networks that amplified Durov's and Simion's positions shows that Russia's attack was strong and sophisticated, with the political objective of showing that Moscow has every right to interfere in the democratic processes of other countries as long as other states do it too.
It is a toxic rhetoric of the Kremlin that aims to create confusion between the public and transparent support of certain candidates by European leaders or political groups and hybrid attacks consisting of data theft, compromising servers used in electoral processes, propaganda, false information, and illegal funding of candidates supported by Moscow.