Russia’s FSB says it detained 46 users of a Telegram dating bot, ages 12 to 22, whom Ukrainian intelligence recruited for sabotage. But the chats in the videos offered as proof are on a Russian app.
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Russia's FSB says it has detained forty-six young Russians, ages twelve to twenty-two, alleging Ukrainian intelligence recruited them through Daivinchik, a wildly popular Telegram dating bot, to carry out arson and attacks on police officers. But Meduza reports that the video evidence Russian state media released as proof actually shows the alleged recruitment conversations happening on a different app, VK Messenger, not Telegram at all. Despite that discrepancy, authorities charged Telegram founder Pavel Durov with facilitating terrorism and added him to Russia's list of terrorists and extremists. Meduza notes Ukrainian officials have leveled a mirror-image accusation, saying Russian security services use the same bot to recruit young Ukrainians through fake profiles of their own.
Source: https://meduza.io/en/feature/2026/07/30/russia-s-fsb-says...
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