Telegrams $500M Bond Freeze Amid Sanctions Reflects Ongoing Russian Ties

Approximately $500 million in bonds issued by the Telegram messaging platform in Russia have been frozen due to sanctions imposed by Western countries, as reported by the Financial Times on Tuesday.

This bond freeze underscores Telegram’s persistent ties to Russian capital, despite efforts made by its billionaire founder, Pavel Durov, to distance the company from Moscow, according to the publication.

In recent years, Telegram has conducted several bond offerings, including a significant issuance of $1.7 billion scheduled for May 2025, the Financial Times noted.

While Telegram has repurchased the majority of its bonds maturing in 2026, about $500 million of this debt remains frozen at Russia’s National Settlement Depository (NSD), sources familiar with negotiations between Telegram’s leadership and investors disclosed to the newspaper.

The NSD has been sanctioned by the European Union, the United States, and the United Kingdom in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

According to Telegram, its revenue for the first half of 2025 increased by over 65% year-on-year, reaching $870 million. However, the company reported a net loss of $222 million, contrasting with a net profit of $334 million during the same timeframe a year prior, the Financial Times indicated.

A source for the Financial Times mentioned that this financial loss was largely caused by a write-down of Telegram’s Toncoin cryptocurrency holdings, which suffered a price drop amid a wider decline in the crypto market during 2025.

Durov, who was born in St. Petersburg, left Russia in 2014 after alleging that he was pressured to provide user data from VKontakte, the social media platform he co-founded, to Russian authorities. He launched Telegram shortly thereafter and subsequently moved the company to Dubai.

Telegram has been criticized by some for its approach to content moderation and for purported collaboration with Russian governmental bodies, allegations that Durov has consistently denied.

In August 2025, Russia began blocking voice and video calls on Telegram and WhatsApp as part of what it termed an anti-fraud initiative, a decision both companies condemned. Around the same period, Russian officials began endorsing Max, a domestic messaging application that has faced scrutiny regarding its data-sharing policies.

Durov, who also possesses French and UAE citizenship, has been under investigation in France since 2024 for Telegram’s alleged inability to prevent criminal activities on the platform. He has denied any allegations of misconduct.