Restrictions have only pushed Russia further away from ‘digital sovereignty,’ Durov said.

Restrictions have only pushed Russia further away from ‘digital sovereignty,’ Durov said.

“Specialists who could have created a smartphone operating system in Russia are leaving the country en masse under the conditions of a broken internet. And without such a system, all smartphone apps — ‘national’ or ‘foreign’ — remain vulnerable to targeted surveillance and censorship by the United States through backdoors and the iOS and Android app stores. Replacing ‘foreign’ apps with ‘national’ ones while keeping American operating systems is changing the packaging without changing the substance. Potemkin villages with a flavor of corruption. The Russian official who broke the internet and threw the country back decades under the pretext of ‘digital sovereignty’ deserves a national security medal — from the United States,” he wrote on Telegram.