Over the weekend, French authorities arrested Pavel Durov, founder of the popular messaging app Telegram. Durov, a Russian tech entrepreneur and billionaire who is part Neo from The Matrix (in his fashion choices) and part Elon Musk (in his mission to impregnate as many women as possible with his ubersperm), had flown into Paris on his personal jet from Azerbaijan, apparently without the foresight that he might be taken into custody. On Monday, French authorities revealed that they had detained him as part of a broader investigation into all the dark, nasty stuff that is allegedly coordinated on Telegram’s largely unmoderated platform—drug trafficking, child pornography, money laundering, and other criminal activity—and Durov’s refusal to cooperate with that investigation. 

The outcry was immediate, from free speech absolutists and fellow tech moguls like Musk to propagandists and cryptofascists like Tucker Carlson. But the protest was especially loud from Russians, with opposition to Durov’s arrest uniting both people aligned with the Kremlin and those who have spent their lives fighting it. For me, this has been the most remarkable development of all, revealing not only a solipsistic Russian worldview, but also how widely that mentality is shared among people who claim to have such radically different visions for Russia’s future. It also helps to explain, in part, why Russia is doomed to stay on its trajectory under Vladimir Putin.