“To Show That Russian Special Services Have Long Arms Also Regarding Telegram”

On the night of April 6–7, the hugely popular anonymous channel VChK-OGPU, with an audience of over a million subscribers, disappeared from Telegram.

The channel published, according to its administrators, exclusive information from sources among Russian security forces. Among the publications was also compromising material on officials and oligarchs. The Telegram team claims that the channel was deleted by its owners, while the authors of VChK-OGPU are convinced that the messenger's founder, Pavel Durov, simply complied with a Russian court order obliging the messenger to restrict access to the resource. 

IStories explains how and why this unprecedented event in the history of the messenger — the removal of a resource with a huge audience and opposed to the Kremlin — could have happened. 

Mysterious disappearance

At the moment, an attempt to view VChK-OGPU opens the channel of the ultra-right-wing misogynist activist Vladislav Pozdnyakov, who appropriated the channel’s alias. Before its deletion, it had over 1.17 million Telegram accounts subscribed to it, according to TGStat.

On Sunday evening, less than 12 hours before the deletion, a post appeared on VChK-OGPU with a link to a backup channel and a statement that the channel “has no regional branches, chats, duplicates, etc. — all those who call themselves such are individuals pursuing dark goals and have nothing to do with us.”

At 4 a.m. Moscow time, a post appeared in the VChK-OGPU backup channel stating that the channel had been deleted by the Telegram administration after a Russian court demanded it in December 2024. The authors of the channel contacted IStories and confirmed that the “backup” belongs to them. 

“This [channel deletion] happened shortly after Telegram owner Pavel Durov left France and ended up in the UAE [as a result of a deal with the French authorities, where he is accused of distributing illegal content. Durov was released from prison in Paris, but was initially ordered to remain in the country — ed.],” the message notes. 

The channel also published a ruling by the Tagansky District Court of Moscow dated December 3, 2024, regarding an administrative case against Telegram for violating the procedure for restricting access to information, in which the court demanded that the messenger's administration restrict access to 22 channels, including VChK-OGPU. 

“Pavel Durov and Telegram have started deleting channels at the request of the Russian authorities. Almost all the channels from this court decision were deleted last night without warning. The vacated links immediately ended up in the hands of individuals connected to the Russian authorities, which indicates coordinated actions,” claims the backup channel. 

Furthermore, the statement says that in April 2024, one of the EU countries launched an investigation into an assassination attempt on the unnamed founder of VChK-OGPU, organized by “one of the Russian special services,” and in August 2024, the channel’s founder was hospitalized for two months with “acute organ damage of unknown origin.”

The BBC News Russian, citing a source, suggests that the liquidation of the Telegram channel may be connected to an “attack on journalist Alexander Shvarev, affiliated with the channel” — according to his information, several months ago, Shvarev was allegedly summoned to the Latvian State Security Service, where he was warned of a possible assassination attempt by Russian special services. 

Who actually founded the channel is not known for certain. In the summer of 2024, the Russian Ministry of Justice recognized VChK-OGPU as a “foreign agent,” linking it to journalist Alexander Shvarev and Alisher Abdullaev. Shvarev is a former employee of the Rosbalt publication who received political asylum in Latvia; Abdullaev’s whereabouts are unknown. IStories contacted the Latvian counterintelligence service for comment; at the time of publication, the agency had not responded. 

The Telegram’s press service told Mediazona that the VChK-OGPU channel was deleted by its owners. “The channel was deleted by its owner, possibly as a result of unauthorized access. We are conducting an investigation,” the message says. 

After this, the backup VChK-OGPU channel stated that “there was no unauthorized access — Telegram itself deleted the channel and is now trying to hide its obvious close interaction with the Russian authorities,” and the messenger team is not responding to their messages. Even according to Telegram’s own rules, a channel with an audience of over 1,000 subscribers cannot be deleted without a lengthy approval process with the messenger's administration, found out the Kompromat.Group resource, affiliated with VChK-OGPU, after attempting to delete its own channel with over 100,000 subscribers. 

Why Russian authorities sought to get rid of VChK-OGPU

Russian pro-war bloggers hinted that the channel was deleted shortly after a series of VChK-OGPU posts about former FSB Colonel Mikhail Polyakov, who is on trial for extortion. He, according to the authors of VChK-OGPU, during the investigation, revealed how the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation took control of dozens of major Z-channels on Telegram (including the Z-channel Dva Mayora [Two Majors], co-founded by Polyakov) and influenced them to start covering the political agenda “in a positive format.”

IStories previously reported in detail about Polyakov. 

The authors of VChK-OGPU, in correspondence from their official email, told IStories that they received no warnings about the impending deletion — it happened out of nowhere. They also cannot definitively state whether the channel’s deletion is related to Colonel Polyakov’s case. 

“The Russian authorities have had a negative attitude towards the channel for a long time, but some frantic activity began a year ago. It has already been established that at that time, there was talk of the physical ‘loud’ elimination of the channel’s founder and thus the cessation of the channel’s operation. This was necessary to show that the Russian special services have long arms also regarding Telegram. The physical elimination did not work out, but everything was done even more loudly and demonstratively. Now any channel can simply be deleted from Telegram at the will of the Russian authorities,” they said. 

The authors of VChK-OGPU believe that Roskomnadzor, which has sent the messenger more than 20 requests to delete various Telegram channels, is a “minor executor,” and the “main drivers behind the channel’s takedown” are the FSB and the GRU (military intelligence). 

“It’s hard to say who in Moscow actually put pressure on Durov and Telegram. But this is a very bad sign. It’s clear that if an agent has appeared within Telegram with access to the ‘delete’ button, then they also have access to the ‘read correspondence’ and ‘find out personal data’ buttons,” VChK-OGPU notes.

Why could VChK-OGPU’s removal be a harbinger of disaster for the media 

Investigative journalist Andrey Zakharov recalls that VChK-OGPU is already the second project that grew out of old “kompromat” platforms and flourished on Telegram. 

“The first was Cello Case, which grew out of Rospres, the second was VChK — it grew out of www.rucriminal.info [both resources compiled compromising material, often without fact-checking — ed.]. Before the Telegram era, these platforms were a niche area, but the messenger gave them the opportunity to reach a wider audience. They continued to publish leaks — I think, for money, as such ‘kompromat’ platforms always did — but at some point (at the start or later) they were joined by [journalist] Alexander Shvarev with his famous sources. Shvarev’s sources even spawned the meme about ‘Rosbalt’s sources.’ Then all of this moved to VChK,” the journalist notes. 

The Rosbalt news agency used to publish, citing sources, exclusive news about the most resonant events: for example, that the head of Rosneft, Igor Sechin, did not follow FSB instructions when he handed over a “basket filled with sausages” to the former head of the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation, Alexei Ulyukayev, or that the FSB is looking for those responsible for leaking the data of Petrov and Boshirov, whom Great Britain accused of attempting to assassinate Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury. The original versions of these articles have been removed from the Rosbalt website. 

“And the fact that they [VChK-OGPU] are cited as a source of information is one of the signs of the times. Both war correspondents and other anonymous Telegram channels are cited. That is, on the one hand, this is a sign that sources have become less willing to communicate with journalists, and on the other hand, it’s a decline in standards, or perhaps not a decline in standards, but a new reality,” Andrey Zakharov believes. 

Today, Telegram remains one of two platforms where uncensored resources can reach a Russian audience without significant obstacles from the state (along with YouTube, where even under conditions of “throttling,” there has not yet been a significant drop in the reach of opposition channels, journalist Alexander Plushev concluded based on YouScore data). 

Until now, the messenger’s administration has not interfered with the work of media outlets or information channels on Telegram. The removal of a resource with an audience of millions, if it actually happened, is an unprecedented event. 

“A very disturbing story: presumably, Telegram has complied with the demands of the Russian authorities regarding a socio-political channel that is not actually terrorist, extremist, or engaged in drug trafficking or anything like that. Essentially, a large socio-political media outlet, albeit a specific, anonymous one, has been deleted. This is a threat to any opposition and independent Telegram channels, so it’s important to pay attention,” writes journalist Dmitry Kolezev.