Russian authorities able to identify train saboteur from anonymous Telegram account

A teenager in Russia who reportedly stopped a train by wrapping copper wire around the tracks was arrested just days after investigators uncovered his channel on Telegram, despite his account being registered to “an anonymous Estonian SIM card.”

The incident, reported by independent news site Meduza in an article about Russian teenagers being imprisoned for sabotage, raises questions about the differences in how the social media platform responds to Russian law enforcement requests for information versus its response to counterparts in the West.

Pavel Durov, the app’s co-founder and chief executive, was arrested in France last month and subsequently placed under formal investigation for a series of crimes connected to his operation of the platform. Durov has described his arrest as “misguided.”

According to the French prosecutor’s office, these charges include Telegram refusing to share information or documents with investigators despite being required to by law, and facilitating the spread of child sexual abuse material.

Official statistics recorded by the U.S.-based National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) published in 2023 show Telegram does not proactively report child abuse material on its platform, unlike Discord, WhatsApp or Snapchat.

Although the company itself claims to remove tens of thousands of channels related to child abuse each month, if these are not reported to NCMEC then law enforcement officials warn they are unable to identify perpetrators and safeguard victims.

Durov has repeatedly presented himself as a privacy absolutist, infamously responding to criticisms his platform was being used by Islamic State by stating: “Our right for privacy is more important than our fear of bad things happening, like terrorism.”

This position, he has claimed, forced him into exile from Russia, although a poorly enforced ban on the app by the Russian communications regulator Roskomnadzor was lifted in 2020 after Durov said the company was doing more to “catch and delete extremist and terrorist content.”

Despite his proclaimed exile, leaked documents purportedly reveal that Durov was in Russia on the day Roskomnadzor said it would stop blocking Telegram, and that he has visited Russia more than 50 times since “emigrating” to Dubai.

The apparent misrepresentation of his relationship with the Russian authorities is likely to contribute to questions about the relationship between those authorities and the Telegram app.

In the case of the Russian teenager, Ilya Podkamenny, it took investigators seven months to identify him after being unable to recover fingerprints or DNA from the crime scene.

However, flyers were found near the scene stating “Death to Russkies, freedom to Siberia” and “Putinists will hang from the trees instead of leaves, death to Putin the fascist.”

These phrases were subsequently searched and found on a Telegram channel called “Siberian Liberation Movement — Republic of Siberia” which had the perpetrator as one of its administrators. “Five days later, he was arrested,” reported Meduza.

“Even after they found his Telegram channel, it’s unclear how the investigators were able to identify Podkamenny; according to him, his account was registered to an anonymous Estonian SIM card,” the outlet added.

Telegram did not immediately respond to a request for comment.