Ukraine has banned use of the
Telegram messaging app on official devices used by government officials,
military personnel and critical workers because it believes its enemy
Russia can spy on both messages and users, a top security body
said on Friday.
The National Security and Defence
Council announced the restrictions after Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukraine's GUR
military intelligence agency, presented the council with evidence of Russian
special services' ability to snoop on the platform, it said in a statement.
But Andriy Kovalenko, head of the
security council's centre on countering disinformation, posted on Telegram that
the restrictions apply only to official devices, not personal phones.
Telegram is heavily used in both
Ukraine and Russia and has become a critical source of information since the
Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
But Ukrainian security officials
have repeatedly voiced concerns about its use during the war.
Based in Dubai, Telegram was founded
by Russian-born Pavel Durov,
who left Russia in 2014 after refusing to comply with demands to shut down opposition
communities on his social media platform VKontakte, which he has sold.
Durov was arrested upon
landing in France in August as part of an investigation into crimes related to
child pornography, drug trafficking and fraudulent transactions on Telegram.
The Security Council statement said
Budanov had provided evidence that Russian special services could access
Telegram messages, including deleted ones, as well as users' personal data.
"I have always supported and
continue to support freedom of speech, but the issue of Telegram is not a
matter of freedom of speech, it is a matter of national security," Budanov
said in his own statement.
After the decision was announced,
Telegram issued a statement saying it had never disclosed anyone's data or the
contents of any message.
"Telegram has never provided
any messaging data to any country, including Russia. Deleted messages are deleted
forever and are technically impossible to recover," Telegram said.
It said every instance of what it
described as "leaked messages" had been proven to be "the result
of a compromised device, whether through confiscation or malware".
According to the Telemetrio
database, about 33,000 Telegram channels are active in Ukraine.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who
sits on the security council, as well as military commanders and regional and
city officials all regularly publish updates on the war and report important
decisions on Telegram.
Ukrainian media have estimated that
75% of Ukrainians use the app for communication and found that 72% saw it as a
key source of information as of the end of last year.