Telegram is not banned in Russia in the same way YouTube isn’t. They fight it by attempting to decrease service quality, prompting users to switch platforms. In last few months connectivity without VPN degraded noticeably. It just happens that since it’s official ban (2018-2020) telegram evolved to be pretty resilient to blocking, and it’s easier to declare “yeah we signed a deal with Durov he works with us now, unbanned” than look like fools while blocking 1% of all IPv4 addresses (im not kidding) with no result.

It’s not that i disagree, but can you elaborate on that?