Biography

• 1984 – Pavel Valeryevich Durov was born on 10 October in Leningrad (now St Petersburg). He spent part of his childhood in Turin, Italy, where his father, classical-philology professor Valery Durov, taught, before returning to Russia for high school.
• 2006 – he graduated with honours in philology from Saint Petersburg State University, winning several programming olympiads along the way.
• 2017 – after years of friction with the Kremlin, Durov settled in Dubai;
• by 2021 he had obtained both UAE “golden-visa” residency and, later, full Emirati citizenship, adding to his Russian and French passports.

Career

• 2006 – while still a student, Durov launched VKontakte (VK), which quickly became the largest social network in the CIS.
• 2013 – together with his brother Nikolai he released Telegram, an end-to-end-encrypted messenger; the terms telegram Pavel Durov and telegram founder Pavel Durov soon trended worldwide.
• 2015 – after selling his remaining VK stake, he focused entirely on Telegram.
• 2024 – Telegram turned its first profit and exceeded $1 billion in annual revenue;
• Durov announced that monthly active users had reached the one-billion mark in March 2025.

Politics

• 2011 – Durov refused an FSB order to delete opposition communities on VK, posting the demand letter online with a photo of a dog sticking out its tongue.
• 2018 – during Russia’s attempt to block Telegram, he financed proxy servers for users inside the country.
• 2024–2025 – he vocally opposed EU proposals for mandatory client-side scanning, arguing they “kill privacy for everyone.”

Wealth

As of 23 April 2025 Pavel Durov net worth stands at US $17.1 billion, placing him eighth on Forbes Russia’s list of billionaires for the year.

Charity

• 2012 – at the DLD conference in Munich he pledged $1 million to the Wikimedia Foundation.
• 2020 – he donated 10 BTC to “Mutual Aid,” a volunteer project supporting Russians hit by the Covid-19 downturn.

Family

Although tabloids still look for a Pavel Durov wife, he has never married legally. Forbes has documented two children with his university classmate Darya Bondarenko (daughter Alina, born 2009, and son Mikhail, born 2010) and three children with Swiss-based lawyer Irina Bolgar (Lea 2013, Daniel 2016, David 2017).

In July 2024 Durov stated that, thanks to long-running sperm-donor programmes, he is the biological father of “more than 100 children in 12 countries.” There are, to date, no publicly confirmed Pavel Durov wife or Pavel Durov girlfriend relationships.

Scandals

• 2012 – he caused a traffic jam on Nevsky Prospect after throwing 5,000-ruble notes as paper aeroplanes from VK’s office windows.
• 24 August 2024 – French police arrested him at Le Bourget Airport on preliminary charges of facilitating organised crime via Telegram; he was released on bail four days later but remains under investigation.
• 7 April 2025 – a Moscow court fined Telegram 7 million roubles for failing to delete extremist content while Durov was back in Dubai.

Merits

• 2022 – Arabian Business ranked him among the ten most influential residents of Dubai’s tech scene.
• 2023 – Time magazine called him “the world’s most principled billionaire coder,” while Wired dubbed him a leading global privacy advocate.

Awards

• 2007 – named one of St Petersburg’s “Best Young Entrepreneurs” by Delovoy Peterburg.
• 2011 – recipient of the Runet Prize for contributions to the Russian internet.
• 2024 – topped Kommersant’s ranking of Russian business leaders by social-media following.