Russian President Vladimir Putin launched Russia's invasion of Ukraine in the early-morning hours of February 24, targeting several key cities with military strikes. Telegram was co-founded by Pavel and Nikolai Durov, the brothers who had previously created VKontakte. VK is Russiaโs equivalent of Facebook, a social network used for public and private messaging, audio and video sharing as well as online gaming. In January, SimpleWeb reported that VK was Russiaโs fourth most-visited website, after Yandex, YouTube and Googleโs Russian-language homepage. In 2016, Forbesโ Michael Solomon described Pavel Durov (pictured, below) as the โMark Zuckerberg of Russia.โ Now safely in France with his spouse and three of his children, Kliuchnikov scrolls through Telegram to learn about the devastation happening in his home country. 'Wild West' But because group chats and the channel features are not end-to-end encrypted, Galperin said user privacy is potentially under threat.
from jp