While Telegram is officially based in the UAE, it has offices and developers in Russia; meanwhile, Pavel Durov is hardly in hiding, visits Russia, and has had no unfortunate encounters with windows or exotic poisons. Which is proof of either (a) Russia’s robust commitment to privacy and human rights, (b) the Russian security services’ comically flat-footed incompetence, or © that Telegram, as it currently stands, serves the Kremlin’s purposes admirably well.