MOSCOW, May 18. /TASS/. Telegram turned down a Western European country’s request to silence channels of Romanian conservatives ahead of the presidential election in that country, the messenger’s co-founder, Pavel Durov, said.
"A Western European government (guess which) approached Telegram, asking us to silence conservative voices in Romania ahead of today’s presidential elections. I flatly refused," he wrote on his Telegram channel, posting a baguette bread emoji in the brackets.
"Telegram will not restrict the freedoms of Romanian users or block their political channels," he emphasized.
"You can’t ‘defend democracy’ by destroying democracy. You can’t ‘fight election interference’ by interfering with elections. You either have freedom of speech and fair elections — or you don’t. And the Romanian people deserve both," he wrote.
In this context, he changed the name of his channel from the French-style Du Rove's Channel to the Latin transcription of his name, Pavel Durov.
Romania is holding the runoff presidential election on May 18. These are repeat presidential elections. The planned election was interrupted at the end of last year by the Constitutional Court of Romania (CC) after nationalist candidate Calin Georgescu received the majority of votes in the first round on November 24, 2024. This was done under the pretext of illegal financing of Georgescu's campaign, hacker attacks on the digital infrastructure used in the electoral process, as well as alleged, but unproven, Russian interference.