MOSCOW (AP) — The founder of Russia’s leading social
media network — a wunderkind often described as Russia’s Mark Zuckerberg
— has left his post as CEO and fled the country as cronies of President
Vladimir Putin have made steady inroads into the company’s ownership.
The
slow-motion ouster of Pavel Durov from the network known as VKontakte,
or "In Contact," is the latest sign that independent media outlets in
Russia have become increasingly imperiled.
Although months in the
making, the loss of Durov’s leadership in VKontakte means that the space
for free speech on the Russian web could shrink even further.
Users
on VKontakte were even spreading jokes this week that the new nickname
for the "In Contact" website should be "In Censorship."
As one of
his final acts of defiance, Durov posted online last week what he said
were documents from the security services, demanding personal details
from 39 Ukraine-linked groups on VKontakte, also known as VK.
Kremlin
pressure on VK has been accompanied by increasing enforcement of
Russia’s law against extremism, which took some prominent opposition and
pro-Ukraine sites off the web in March.
On Tuesday, the Russian
parliament passed a law requiring social media websites to keep their
servers in Russia and save all information about their users for at
least half a year. The same law, which will go into effect in August if
signed by Putin, gave bloggers the same legal status — and
responsibilities — as media outlets, making them more vulnerable to
accusations of libel or extremism.
Since the protests began in
Ukraine, Putin and much of Russian media have amplified the patriotic
rhetoric, proclaiming the need to secure Russia from enemies both
foreign and domestic. In a televised call-in show last week, Putin
equated those critical of Kremlin policy in Ukraine with Bolshevik
revolutionaries who rooted for Russia’s defeat in World War I, and
discussions about the country’s traitorous Fifth Column have become the
fare of state television.
VK, which largely resembles an older
version of Facebook, attracts about 60 million users daily, primarily
from countries in the former Soviet Union, vastly outstripping
Facebook’s reach in the region. It played an instrumental role in
bringing hundreds of thousands of protesters into the streets in late
2011 in the wake of widely manipulated parliamentary elections, and it
has played a part in drawing crowds to the Kiev protest movement that
helped oust Ukraine’s pro-Russian president in February.
"There’s
been a trend that started with the protests of December 2011, when the
authorities started fearing the crowd and especially the online crowd,"
said Anton Nossik, Russia’s leading Internet entrepreneur. "The pressure
of censorship is mounting on Russian websites from lawmakers who think
that the Internet is their foe."
The 29-year-old Durov has
cultivated a reputation as a rebel willing to stand up to Kremlin
pressure, ostentatiously refusing to shut down VK groups linked to the
Russian opposition movement or to give out personal information on its
leaders.
He also has become known for more eccentric stunts, like
throwing paper airplanes made of 5,000 ruble notes (about $140 each) out
of his office window, or posting a picture of his middle finger online
after breaking up a major deal with a pro-Kremlin investor.
Since
opening in 2006, VK has thrived on the same devil-may-care reputation as
its founder. While much of the website’s success was thanks to
Facebook’s sluggish adaptation to the Russian market, VK cemented its
status as a Russian staple by hosting thousands of pirated video and
music files, which users can watch for free.
It didn’t take long
for VK to attract the attention of investors as well as the government.
In 2010, one major investor who was friendly with Durov handed his stake
in the company over to Mail.ru Group, a holding company owned by
Russia’s richest man and Putin crony Alisher Usmanov
That move was
followed by a large sell-off by Durov’s old allies in April 2013 to
UCP, a company reportedly owned by Igor Sechin, the chief of Russian oil
giant Rosneft and a member of Putin’s inner circle.
That left
Durov himself, who only learned of the deal after it had been signed, as
the last remaining holdout in the company ownership. He stayed on as
CEO, but increasingly found himself in standoffs with its new
stakeholders.
"A shareholder war started," said Nikolai Kononov,
who wrote the book "Durov’s Code" about VK. "It seems that Durov already
understood at that moment that he should sell his shares. But at the
same time, he wanted to preserve the project he built, as well as his
reputation. Hence why it’s taken so long."
That same month, a
criminal investigation was opened into Durov’s alleged participation in a
hit-and-run incident with a St. Petersburg police officer — a case that
Durov’s supporters said was fabricated and linked to political pressure
on the organization.
In June 2013, the case against Durov was
quietly closed, but the message it sent was clear. In January, he sold
his remaining 12 percent share in the company to Ilya Tavrin, another
businessman linked to Usmanov. He also moved to diversify his portfolio
outside Russia: With the help of his brother, he developed the messenger
service Telegram, a Berlin-based company that he marketed as a
completely hack-resistant communication tool, impenetrable even to the
prying eyes of the National Security Agency.
If Durov wanted to
develop Telegram and cultivate a name for himself as an uncompromising
businessman abroad, that would mean keeping VK free of Kremlin influence
as long as he was CEO of the company. Kononov said.
But Durov’s
timing couldn’t have been worse: After Putin returned to the presidency
in 2012 amid the large anti-Kremlin street protests, he tried to
consolidate his power by passing a series of laws clamping down on the
opposition.
Many deemed social media, which had provided a
platform for protest leaders, a likely next casualty. This spring, the
Livejournal blog of opposition leader and anti-corruption activist
Alexei Navalny was wiped off the web. For VK, which continued to allow
groups in support of Navalny or Ukraine’s protest movement to exist, it
appeared it would only be a matter of time before its pro-Kremlin
investors would start cracking down.
Durov’s exit from the company
was drawn out and chaotic. After selling his shares in January, Durov
posted a message April 1 that he was quitting the company — only to say
two days later it had been an April Fool’s joke.
On Tuesday, he
said he had been fired from the company and only found out through the
media. One of the pro-Kremlin stakeholders claimed Durov had signed his
own resignation letter a month ago and never withdrew it, while another
insisted that Durov had no right to quit. Durov is being sued by one of
the stakeholders, UCP, which accuses him of diverting money and
programming talent from VK and using them to develop Telegram instead.
Durov told the technology magazine Techcrunch that he had left Russia and had no plans to return in the
near future.
"In
this way, today VKontakte will be transferred to the full control of
Igor Sechin and Alisher Usmanov," he wrote on his VK page Monday night.
"Under the conditions in Russia something like this was probably
inevitable, but I am happy that we held out for seven and a half years.
We did a lot."
___
Alexander Roslyakov contributed reporting.
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