"And that set off kind of a battle royale for control of the platform that Durov eventually lost," said Nathalie Maréchal of the Washington advocacy group Ranking Digital Rights. Telegram users are able to send files of any type up to 2GB each and access them from any device, with no limit on cloud storage, which has made downloading files more popular on the platform. At this point, however, Durov had already been working on Telegram with his brother, and further planned a mobile-first social network with an explicit focus on anti-censorship. Later in April, he told TechCrunch that he had left Russia and had “no plans to go back,” saying that the nation was currently “incompatible with internet business at the moment.” He added later that he was looking for a country that matched his libertarian ideals to base his next startup. The last couple days have exemplified that uncertainty. On Thursday, news emerged that talks in Turkey between the Russia and Ukraine yielded no positive result. But on Friday, Reuters reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin said there had been some “positive shifts” in talks between the two sides. Founder Pavel Durov says tech is meant to set you free
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