Ukraine may block the Telegram messenger in the event of a serious critical situation with information leakage. Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, chairman of the parliamentary committee on freedom of speech, said this in an interview with RBC-Ukraine.
"To block Telegram, you need to have a clear argument - the NSDC's decision on sanctions, for example. And for this to happen, some serious critical situation with information leakage must occur. I would not like this to happen, so we need to make a choice," Yurchyshyn said.
The MP noted that the Ukrainian authorities have only now begun to establish contact with the Telegram administration - previously, all appeals were ignored.
"We are talking to different people. Do we have a 100% guarantee that Durov is the owner of Telegram? According to him, yes. But he doesn't really say much. There is a person who is nominally responsible for communication in Eastern Europe, and in Ukraine as well," he said.
Yurchyshyn also suggests that the Russian authorities retain some control over Telegram, and therefore there is no guarantee that all information of individuals there is protected and not given to the Russian secret services.
"There are a few things that are very disturbing about this particular network. For example, when the late Navalny created a bot to collect information about the previous so-called elections in Russia. And this bot was immediately blocked. There was an argument that it was politics, and Telegram rejects politics, but even now we see hundreds of political channels on the network. Stories like this, when Telegram blocks something that is not in Russia's favor, show that Durov may still have communication with the Putin regime," he said.
According to Yurchyshyn, there is a long way to go in terms of sanctions against Telegram: "That is, fixing the problems, fixing the fact that the network is not working, fixing the challenges we face for national security, bringing it to the NSDC, the decision of the NSDC, the presidential decree, and the implementation of the presidential decree. Is this card still on the table? Yes, it is. Can it be used? Yes, if any blow to our information security is very painful."
