Telegram appears to have initiated another wave of blocking channels involved in information leaks. According to the publication *Novaya-Europe*, among those blocked was the channel of the hacker group Black Mirror—shut down for "doxing and extortion."
This channel had posted correspondence and documents belonging to high-ranking Russian officials as well as business elites. Additionally, its administrators offered interested parties the opportunity to purchase the published materials.
Telegram also removed Black Mirror posts that users had saved as favorites or forwarded in private messages.
One of Black Mirror's high-profile leaks involved the participation of Vladimir Putin's close friends—billionaires Arkady and Boris Rotenberg—as well as First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Administration Sergei Kiriyenko in the production of short films parodying Soviet cinema. Prominent Russian actors also took part in the project.
Earlier, Telegram founder Pavel Durov stated that he had received hundreds of complaints, based on which "many" channels are planned to be blocked by the end of the week.
"Blocking for this reason means we have irrefutable evidence: administrators published compromising materials and then deleted them for payment from the victims. Some were even caught selling so-called 'negative blocks'—payments to stop harassment," he explained.
At the end of June, Telegram shut down at least three Russian, four Ukrainian, and one Belarusian channel. In total, around ten resources specializing in open-source investigations disappeared.
All the deleted channels had the acronym OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) in their names.