Pavel Durov

About

Russian entrepreneur who famously is known for being the founder of the social networking VKontakte and the instant messaging service Telegram Messenger. He was controversially arrested in France in August 2024 for failure to prevent some of the misuse on his platform.

Before Fame

He graduated from the Philology Department of the Saint Petersburg State University in 2006. 

Trivia

He was named the most promising Northern European leader under 30 in 2014. At the age of 27, he donated a million dollars to the Wikimedia Foundation to support Wikipedia.

Family Life

His father Valery Semenovich Durov is a Doctor of Philological Sciences. His older brother Nikolai Durov co-founded VK and Telegram Messenger. 

Associated With

He has been nicknamed the Mark Zuckerberg of Russia. In July 2015, he posted an Instagram photo of a newspaper headline about Edward Snowden.