I'm glad you decided to take this angle. There are many more weird details to this story, such as the recently uncovered history of Durov’s frequent and secret trips to Russia (where he was presumably persona non grata), rumors about his attempt to meet Putin in Azerbaijan (denied by the Kremlin, which only fueled the speculations), Telegrams financial ties to Moscow through Russian banks VTB and Alfa, etc. I don't want to draw any conclusions, but it seems obvious that there is so much more to this story than “free speech crackdown/big tech regulation”