Andrii Yusov, a representative of the Defense Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, stated that Telegram is often used as a legalized Darknet to a certain extent – it distributes prohibited content. Also, the social network is used to pressure and influence Ukrainians as a platform for russian IPSO.

In an interview with the Center for Countering Disinformation, Yusov spoke about the russian trail in Telegram and whether there is a need to block the messenger.

“If we talk about the russian trail, well, sorry, the owner is a russian. The entire development team is russian. Now it is an offshore company with a closed ownership structure. There is information about the probability of placing part of the servers on the territory of the russian federation, part of the core team, which was from the very beginning, remains on the territory of the russian federation,” Yusov emphasized.

In addition, according to the intelligence officer, cases of official cooperation of this platform with russian special services on the territory of the russian federation have been recorded.

“Anonymous Telegram channels are a separate story. Today, Telegram is very often used as a somewhat legalized Darknet, in which you can find everything: from drug sales to groups of evaders, or some other people who do anything – up to child pornography,” he said.

Yusov emphasized that “of course, this applies to IPSO”. In particular, they are trying to exert pressure and influence on Ukraine and Ukrainian citizens through anonymous Telegram channels.

“Certainly, the state should not and cannot afford to just silently observe this,” he emphasized.

Yusov added: “I will not use loud words – a ban or other things. But it is definitely necessary to normalize it, to de-anonymize such tools. If we have sufficiently strict requirements for traditional media – both print and online, television – why are these requirements not should be to other platforms that are focused on the dissemination of information that affects our safety,” concluded the representative of the Defense Intelligence.

As Ukrainian News Agency earlier reported, monitoring of Telegram will be established in Europe.

Earlier, Ukrenergo warned about fake schedules of power outages, which are distributed in Telegram.

In April, the Defense Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine reported that the management of the Telegram messenger blocked a number of official bots, in particular the chatbot of Ukrainian intelligence.

In March, the SSU accused Telegram of cooperating with the FSB and Roskomnadzor.

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