"The deputy speaker of the state Duma, Vladislav Davankov, said he had called on Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov to secure Durov’s release. “The arrest of [Durov] could have political motives and be a means of obtaining the personal data of Telegram users. We must not allow this,” he said on his Telegram channel."
Yes, in case like Facebook it would be easy to say that it provides information to the U.S. gov.
With Telegram, as you say, the Russian ban (somewhere around 2014) could have been designed to signal that Telegram is not run by the FSB.
This arrest, on the other hand, could have been intended signal that Telegram is not run by the CIA.
There have been a couple of house searches, extradition orders and YouTube bans all in the last two weeks for pro Russian commentators. I always wonder if these individuals are genuine or actually working for the U.S. gov.
Anyway, together with the latest crackdown of the EU on Musk all these events could be genuine and not staged.
after watching Carlson's interview with Durov have come to think he may be the genuine article. Very interesting bit his relating us agents trying to recruit a dev and pushing some specified but alas unnamed oss libraries to use in Telegram.
https://www.ft.com/content/c5d40e3c-9f9c-43dc-a467-1c713b40c...
That makes me wonder if Telegram was always a Russian spook op and its [ineffective] banning just a ruse.
I don't think any of the major platforms are independent of some spook oversight.