From this article it sounds like he probably did give info over to the FSB when running VK after he got spooked. Though at least it does sound like after that he made changes to get out of the country so he could be more independent.
VK =/= Telegram. At this point the FSB has free reign on key requests from VK — it’s owned in majority by Usmanov, who has strong connections to the Kremlin. But in the article it says that he made that clear in his remarks as well when he was ousted.
Yeah I know VK != Telegram, but in the article when he was running VK it sounded like he got scared and handed over a lot of personal user details to the government.
It also sounded like with Telegram there was some abuse of looking up or deleting other employees chats when threatened. The culture of the company doesn’t seem great.
All of this is kind of irrelevant though. The core issue is unencrypted chats.
