UPDATE 2: Peskov says court mutes Telegram, but Russians use it

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MOSCOW, Apr 23 (PRIME) -- Messenger Telegram is blocked in Russia by court, but de facto it is used, the president’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Thursday.

A Just Russia political party’s deputies Dmitry Ionin and Fedot Tumusov drafted a bill to stop blocking Telegram during high alert regimes or emergencies as a government information resource. They said the messenger has started fulfilling a socially important function as it is used by the government to inform Russians of the coronavirus situation.

“I’ll abstain from any assessment. It is true that there is a situation de jure and de facto. We must do it de jure. There is a relevant court decision, on which blocking is based. But you’re right and the de facto situation is different. I won’t comment on the matter,” Peskov said.

The communications service has been muting Telegram since April 2018 because the messenger refused to share the decoding keys with the Federal Security Service. The messenger is still available to users.

Alexander Khinshtein, head of the information policy committee at the State Duma, the parliament’s lower house, found the bill unfeasible.

“The bill they submitted does not have a word on Telegram, and the bill is unrealistic from the very beginning. It seems that the authors did not need a decision to the problem but politicking.  I hope I’m mistaken,” Khinshtein said on Twitter.

A Digital Development Ministry spokesperson told PRIME the authority had received a letter from the deputies with a request to support the bill.

“We’ll be able to comment on the deputies’ request after its consideration,” the spokesperson said.

The deputies said the efforts taken to mute Telegram proved to be ineffective over the two years of its blocking, and the messenger’s audience increased to 20.1 million per month in February from 9.3 million in October 2018, according to researcher Mediascope.

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