The most popular social network in Russia, also known as “Russian Facebook” couldn’t avoid Kremlin’s grip of censorship.
29 year old Pavel Nturov, founder of VKontakte, the most popular social network in Russia, said the Kremlin has shown him the door… and that the “Russian Facebook” is now under the complete control of two close associates of Vladimir Putin.
Durov announced his firing by the Kremlin on his personal page on VKontakte: “Today, VKontakte goes under the complete control of Igor Sechin and Alisher Usmanov.”
Usmanov is a Russian mining tycoon, who expanded into the field of technology via his company Mail.ru. He has steadily upped his stake in the Russian social network. In 2012 he owned a 10% stake. Alisher Sechin is CEO of the state-owned oil company that backs Putin and he is considered one of the closest associates of the Russian president.
It should be noted that the government of Moscow has recently started censoring Russian television networks, newspapers and Russian websites. Their administration changed suddenly under the orders of the Russian president, who did not like the directors of the networks nor their ideas.
Durov, the shy 29-year-old founder of Vkontakte, a network that now boasts more than 100 million users in Russia and other post-Soviet countries, tried to stay out of politics but, according to his statements, there have been previous Kremlin attempts to censor VKontakte. Last week, he posted that he had in the past received requests to shut down groups on the site related to opposition leader Alexey Navalny and to anti-government protests in Ukraine, and had refused.