I think they legitimately blocked Telegram and then Durov made a series of choices to bring it back to Russia.

Basically everything in the KI story has been verified. Durov admitted that he kept his Russian passport, he admitted that he was essentially lying about his Russian exile and regularly and freely traveled there, he hasn’t denied spending the week before Telegram was reinstated in St Petersburg which would be a no-brainer if he wasn’t really there.

As for choice of app — it again depends on your adversary. Telegram’s non-standard and home-brewed protocol has had every crypto expert asking “why? If not to…”

Lookup the name Vladimir Vedeneev and try and figure out why he’s signing Russian contracts as Telegram’s CFO and why his company GlobalNet has bragged about being the first to do DPI on backbone infrastructure while his other company Electrotelecom has FSB contracts for surveillance software.