Pavel Durov, the Russian-born founder of Telegram, said Tuesday, Feb. 24, that Russian authorities were probing him for “aiding terrorism”, the latest escalation in Moscow’s repeated attempts to block the popular messenger. Moscow has restricted access to both Telegram and WhatsApp, Russia’s two most popular messaging apps, as it tries to shift users onto Max — a state-backed alternative which critics say lacks privacy. “Russia has opened a criminal case against me for ‘aiding terrorism’,” Durov, who holds Russian and French citizenship and lives outside Russia, wrote on Telegram. “Each day, the authorities fabricate new pretexts to restrict Russians’ access to Telegram as they seek to suppress the right to privacy and free speech,” he added. Russia has been unsuccessfully ...