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After more than a decade of tragedy, Christchurch emerges as New Zealand’s most ‘vibrant city’

From 2010, New Zealand’s second-largest city, Christchurch, became inextricably linked with crises. The city, which had been known for its gardens, gothic architecture and monochromatic culture was rocked by a decade of tragedy – devastating and fatal earthquakes, wildfires and a terrorist attack on two mosques that killed more than 50 people. But in recent years, the city of crises has taken a surprising turn – shrugging off its once-conservative reputation and rebuilding from tragedy to become one of New Zealand’s most appealing cities. Christchurch is now at the centre of the country’s fastest-growing region as people from the North Island and further afield flock to the revitalised city. Business growth outpaces the national average and the cultural scene is thriving, as experts say affordability and job prospects entice people to the city. Christchurch mayor Phil Mauger claims the city is “the capital of cool”. “We’ve been named New Zealand’s most vibrant city as well as ranking highest in the 2024 Happy City Index,” he says, citing affordability and quality of life as key attractions. The shift in Christchurch’s desirability would have been difficult to imagine just over a decade ago. In February 2011, a 6.3-magnitude earthquake struck Christchurch, killing 185 people, disrupting tens of thousands of lives and reducing 80% of the city centre to rubble. Tens of thousands of people left the city following the quakes. In 2017, destructive fires in the Port Hills, claimed one life, razed homes and forced more than 1,000 people to evacuate. Then, two years later, the world looked on in horror as news broke that a white supremacist terrorist had gunned down more than 50 Muslim worshipers at two of the city’s mosques. In the wake of those attacks, attention turned towards how Christchurch could have become the target of such terror. “When the ground literally shifted beneath us, when hatred struck at the heart of our community, and when our Port Hills caught on fire, we chose … unity and hope to see us through,” says Mauger. Resilience and a slow but measured post-earthquake rebuild has transformed the city. New buildings have sprung up, there are splashes of colourful street art everywhere and striking public artworks are dotted around the city. “The community is at the heart of everything we do. Amazing things can be born out of disaster when a community refuses to be defined by such devastating events,” says Mauger. ‘I was struggling in Auckland’ Provisional data from Stats NZ released in October shows Canterbury’s population grew by 1.1%, the result of Christchurch’s provisional net migration gain of 5,300. The average house value in Christchurch is around NZ$751,000 ($439,000), compared with about NZ$1.2m in Auckland. Musician Amelia Murray says when she saw the price of a Christchurch house on a social media listing, her “jaw dropped”. She moved to the city from Auckland in 2022. “I could actually afford to buy a house in Christchurch,” Murray says. “I was struggling to live in Auckland while trying to do my art. I just felt like I was battling the city, it was draining me.” Murray, who performs as Fazerdaze, has seen her career accelerate since moving to the city. Her record Soft Power just won album of the year at the Aotearoa Music Awards, where she was also named best solo artist. She says as a single woman and an artist, being able to afford her own home has given her “a sense of dignity and pride”. Still, some costs are higher. Christchurch residential rates are generally above those in Auckland and Wellington as the city continues to undergo post-earthquake recovery. Murray says the money appears to be translating into infrastructure. “I’m happy to pay my rates. The gardens and cycle tracks are so well-maintained, I love Tūranga [the library] and the outdoor facilities. I’m so much more outdoorsy here than I was in Auckland.” Chief executive of ChristchurchNZ, Ali Adams, describes Christchurch as a “Goldilocks city”, saying: “It’s 20 minutes to get anywhere, it’s big enough for global business and small enough to have a career and balanced lifestyle.” Data from ChristchurchNZ shows in the year to August 2025, the number of business locations in Canterbury increased 2.4%, more than double the rate of national business growth and the highest in the country, it said. Among the new business owners is Liam Kelleher, who grew up in Christchurch. He recently returned to his home town after from living in London where he worked in the wine sector. Kelleher opened Christchurch’s first urban cidery and restaurant, Lillies, last year with co-owner Will Lyons-Bowman. Despite the nationwide cost of living crisis, he says the venture didn’t feel like a risk as “Christchurch was ready for something a bit different.” In May, The Press reported Christchurch’s 15-24-year-old population has increased by 6%, and that the University of Canterbury Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha has the second-fastest university growth in the country. Adams says she’s seeing growth in industries like health tech and aerospace, and that is attracting younger people to Christchurch. “They want to do work that makes change in the world,” says Adams. Mauger is hopeful that Christchurch can also become a draw for sporting and events, with the NZ$683m One New Zealand Stadium at Te Kaha due to open in the city centre in 2026. The biggest indoor sports and aquatics facility in the country, the NZ$300m Parakiore Recreation and Sports Centre, opens in December. But he says it’s “not just about bricks and mortar”. “The city’s resurgence has been built on the courage, compassion [of] … its people. From tragedy has come positivity and resilience,” Mauger says.

Myanmar’s first election since the 2021 coup: everything you need to know

Five years after Myanmar’s junta ousted the country’s last elected government, triggering a civil war, voting is set to begin this week in national elections. The junta claims the vote is a return to democracy, but in reality the one-sided and heavily restricted poll has been widely condemned as a sham designed to keep the generals in power through proxies. The first of three rounds of voting is due to begin at 6am on 28 December. More than 100 townships, including the commercial capital of Yangon, will vote in this first phase of the elections, followed by another 100 in the second phase on 11 January. The details of a possible third phase are yet to be announced. Who is running? There will be 57 parties on the ballot on Sunday, but the majority are perceived as being linked to or dependent on the military. Only six parties are running nationwide, with the rest only running in a single state or region. The military-backed Union Solidarity and Development party has fielded the largest number of candidates and is in effect running uncontested in dozens of constituencies. The party of Aung San Suu Kyi, which won a landslide victory in the 2020 election but was ousted in the 2021 coup, will not be running. Her National League for Democracy was dissolved after it refused to comply with a demand to register with the junta-backed Union Election Commission. Dozens of ethnic parties were also dissolved. According to election monitoring group Anfrel, 57% of the parties that ran in the 2020 general election no longer exist, even though they received more than 70% of votes and 90% of seats. So is the election free and fair? Several countries, the United Nations, and rights groups have described the elections as a sham designed to keep Myanmar’s ruling generals in power through proxies, although the junta insists the polls have public support. The elections will be held amid a raging civil war, triggered by the coup which ousted Aung San Suu Kyi’s government and ushered in the military junta. Voting will not take place in rebel-held areas, which cover large swaths of the country. Meanwhile, the junta has arrested more than 200 people for violating draconian legislation forbidding “disruption” of the poll, including protest or criticism on social media. Those convicted of breaking the law can face punishments ranging from three years in prison to the death penalty. The law has been used against young people putting up boycott stickers, film directors and artists who posted reactions on social media, and to charge journalists, according to rights groups. The military government has dismissed international criticism, with a spokesperson for the military government saying Myanmar will “continue to pursue our original objective of returning to a multiparty democratic system”. Which countries are supporting the vote and why? Myanmar’s biggest ally and northern neighbour China has thrown its support behind the junta, and its decision to hold elections. Analysts say that China views the vote as the country’s best path back to stability. Many western governments consider the vote a sham. UN human rights chief, Volker Türk, said this week that the elections were taking place in an atmosphere of “violence and repression” and that military authorities “must stop using brutal violence to compel people to vote, and stop arresting people for expressing any dissenting views”. The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said in October the US was still formulating its policy on Myanmar. The US has previously been a strong critic of the junta, though earlier this year it lifted sanctions designations on several military allies. In November the US Department of Homeland Security said there had been improvements in governance in Myanmar, and cited the election as justification for removing temporary protected status for Myanmar nationals – an assessment rights groups have strongly disputed. Lashing back at foreign criticism of the poll last week, the junta spokesperson Zaw Min Tun told reporters: “It is not being held for the international community.” What about Aung San Suu Kyi? Myanmar’s former de facto leader has been siloed in military detention since the 2021 coup, but her absence looms large over the elections. Aung San Suu Kyi’s reputation abroad is heavily tarnished over her government’s handling of the Rohingya crisis. But for her many followers in Myanmar her name is still a byword for democracy, her absence on the ballot an indictment it will be neither free nor fair. She is serving a 27-year sentence for offences ranging from corruption to breaching Covid-19 restrictions, charges which rights groups dismiss as politically motivated. Little has been seen or heard of her since her arrest and concerns over her health in custody have been raised by her family and supporters. “I don’t think she would consider these elections to be meaningful in any way,” her son Kim Aris said from his home in Britain.

Gibraltar’s chief minister made ‘sinister’ interventions to protect friend from police

The chief minister of Gibraltar made a series of “grossly improper” and “sinister” interventions to interfere in a live criminal investigation in order to protect his friend, mentor and business partner from the consequences of a search warrant, a public inquiry has found. The retired England and Wales high court judge and inquiry chair, Sir Peter Openshaw, concluded that Fabian Picardo acted to protect James Levy KC when police were at Hassans law firm, where Levy was a senior partner, with a search warrant. The warrant relating to Levy concerned an investigation into an alleged plot to steal a state security contract. He was never charged and Openshaw said that he had in effect been exonerated. Openshaw said that while the Royal Gibraltar police (RGP) officers were at Hassans, Picardo summoned the commissioner of police, Ian McGrail, to his office and “berated” him while in a “towering rage” in “a grossly improper attempt to interfere in a legitimate police investigation and operation”. McGrail retired a month after the May 2020 incident and the inquiry aimed to establish whether he was forced out. The retired judge said: “I reject Mr Picardo’s defence of his actions. I do not think that he was protecting the reputation of Gibraltar; I think it far more likely that he was moving to protect Mr Levy, his life-time friend and ‘mentor’, from the likely consequences of the warrant being executed or his phones being interrogated.” Picardo was also found to have shared confidential information with Levy’s lawyer about what he thought was the director of public prosecutions’ advice on the warrant as well as information about police disciplinary regulations that appeared aimed at targeting McGrail or the senior investigating officer on the case, which Openshaw described as “sinister”. He said there was “a very high risk” of Picardo’s duties as chief minister conflicting with his interests as a friend and business partner of Levy. Nevertheless, the retired judge found that Picardo’s actions had not “in fact interfered with the visit of the RGP to Hassans; they carried on precisely as had been planned. I conclude that there was no actual interference with the RGP’s actions on 12 May.” The search warrant under scrutiny related to alleged hacking and sabotage of the national security centralised intelligence system and into a conspiracy to defraud Bland Ltd, the private company that was operating the system, in order to benefit another firm, 36 North Limited. Hassans owned a third of 36 North Limited – which had also held security contracts with the government – and, through the law firm, Picardo and Levy owned equity interests too. The inquiry heard that Picardo and the then interim governor, Nick Pyle, claimed to have lost confidence in McGrail over a series of issues including his handling of a fatal collision at sea involving an RGP vessel in March 2020. However, Openshaw said the “real reason” was the police application for a search warrant against Levy and Picardo’s genuine belief that McGrail had lied to him about the investigation. The report found that Picardo believed that McGrail told him the DPP had advised the RGP to apply for a search warrant, even though McGrail did not say this “in clear and unambiguous terms”. Openshaw said McGrail did mention engagement with the DPP but “did not lie” and Picardo’s decision “that Mr McGrail had to go” was “in part based on a misunderstanding” that the police commissioner had deliberately lied. Picardo claimed the government had been completely exonerated. “The report finds that there was no actual interference with the RGP’s investigation by me, by anyone on my behalf or by any officer of the government and no conspiracy to remove him [McGrail] from office.” Openshaw said of McGrail: “I conclude that one of the main reasons that he retired was that he felt under pressure to do so because he knew that the chief minister and the governor had lost confidence in him, but he did so only because he knew he was being unfairly compelled to do so because neither they nor the GPA [Gibraltar Police Authority, the policing watchdog] had followed the proper procedures. He was, in effect, being forced out.” He said the procedural irregularities including a failure to examine McGrail’s extremely serious allegations of political interference, “might have been cured” but refused to say whether it would have changed the outcome for McGrail.

Russian attacks kill three and cut power to freezing Ukrainian regions

A massive Russian drone and missile attack on Ukraine has killed three people and cut power to several Ukrainian regions two days before Christmas and as the country enters a period of very cold weather. Russia sent more than 650 drones and more than 30 missiles into Ukraine in the attack, which began overnight and continued into Tuesday morning, local officials said. At least three people were killed, including a four-year-old child. Poland scrambled fighter jets to protect its airspace during the strike, the country’s army said in a statement. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said in a post on Telegram: “A strike before Christmas, when people want to be with their families, at home, in safety. A strike, in fact, in the midst of negotiations that are being conducted to end this war. Putin cannot accept the fact that we must stop killing.” Meanwhile, Ukraine pressed on with strikes against Russian oil and gas infrastructure, hitting a petrochemical plant in southern Russia’s Stavropol region. Footage circulating on Russian media channels showed towering flames in the industrial area, which the regional governor, Vladimir Vladimirov, said had been engulfed by a fire. The strikes follow weekend negotiations in Miami involving Donald Trump’s peace envoy, Steve Witkoff, and representatives from Russia and Ukraine, who each held separate meetings with Witkoff and Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. Witkoff called the discussions “constructive” but there was no sign the talks were any closer to bringing lasting peace. Zelenskyy said in a statement that he was briefed on the state of the talks on Tuesday morning and that “several draft documents have now been prepared”, including an outline for ending the war, options for Ukraine’s future security guarantees and plans for the country’s postwar reconstruction. Ukraine has engaged its European allies to help hammer out a compromise agreement with the US, although Zelenskyy has said the issue of territorial concessions remained a sticking point. There is no sign that Russia is even close to signing up to the package of agreements Kyiv and Washington have arrived at, despite repeated positive messaging from the White House that peace is close. “Slow progress is being observed,” the Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, told state media after the talks. However, Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, has said many times that Russia will agree only to a deal that addresses what he sees as the “root causes” of the conflict – a sweeping set of demands that would in effect erode Ukraine’s sovereignty. Putin’s spokesperson struck a downbeat tone on Tuesday, telling Russian media that the latest round of talks had not produced a breakthrough. Russia has continued to hit Ukrainian energy infrastructure as the talks go on, apparently in the hope of making conditions harder for the population and breaking Ukrainian resolve. Tuesday’s attack, which the energy operator Ukrenergo said was the ninth mass attack on energy infrastructure of the season, left three western regions of Ukraine “almost completely without power”, it said. Kyiv and many other cities have been experiencing scheduled power cuts for weeks as the grid struggles to cope with reduced capacity during the winter months. Temperatures have dropped below freezing in many parts of Ukraine, with a high of -5C forecast for Kyiv on Wednesday. Reports suggested a toddler was killed in the north-western Zhytomyr region on Tuesday, while a drone killed a woman close to Kyiv. Authorities in several western regions reported damage to energy infrastructure. Russia struck a series of infrastructure targets in the southern city of Odesa and damaged more than 100 houses, according to local officials. Russia has been attacking the port city relentlessly over recent weeks, leading to sustained power shortages.

Bolsonaro supporters ‘cancel’ Havaianas flip-flop brand over television ad

Leaderless since its figurehead was jailed for attempting a coup, Brazil’s far right has found a new nemesis: the flip-flop brand Havaianas, which has been “cancelled” by Jair Bolsonaro’s supporters over a television advert. The controversy stems from the actor Fernanda Torres – the star of I’m Still Here, the Brazilian film that won an Oscar for best international feature – saying in the ad that she hoped audiences would not start 2026 “on the right foot”, but “with both feet”. Bolsonaro supporters interpreted the remark as a jab at the right and called for a boycott, echoing actions by Donald Trump’s backers against Bud Light, Keurig machines, Kellogg’s cereals and even Beyoncé. One of the former president’s sons, Eduardo Bolsonaro – whose mandate was recently revoked after he abandoned his post as a congressman and moved to the US to lobby Trump to retaliate against Brazil over his father’s trial – recorded a video in which he throws a pair of Havaianas into a bin. “I thought this here was a national symbol,” he said, pointing to the small Brazilian flag that is a trademark of the sandals. “But I was mistaken. They chose as the spokesperson for the sandal someone who is openly left wing.” Neither Torres nor the brand have commented publicly on the controversy. “I’ll tell the marketing people [at Havaianas] to get advice from the Budweiser marketing department here in the US, which also lost touch with reality and took a billion-dollar loss,” said the former congressman, referring to the backlash Bud Light faced after running an advert featuring the transgender TikTok star Dylan Mulvaney, before later being “forgiven” by Trump. The first day of the flip-flop boycott, on Monday, is said to have wiped about £20m off the company’s market value. On the left, reactions ranged from earnest appeals urging Bolsonaro supporters to donate their sandals, to mockery, including offers to swap the flip-flops for an electronic ankle tag in Brazil’s national colours. The device has become a running joke since Bolsonaro was caught trying to destroy his own ankle tag with a soldering iron, prompting his transfer from house arrest to a cell where he began serving his sentence after being convicted of masterminding a plot to overturn the result of the 2022 election.

Sydney’s queer bookstore ‘haven’ to close after 43 years: ‘This has never been about just selling books’

It has just turned 10am when Noel Lee unlocks the door of the Bookshop Darlinghurst and puts the pink sign out on Oxford Street. The message to passersby is simple: “Read Gay Books.” Sign in place, Lee returns to the store. The shelves are emptying fast, price tags slashed with red pen for the fire sale: after selling books on the site since 1982, the Bookshop Darlinghurst will be closing on Christmas Eve – one week after Guardian Australia visits the store. Lee has worked there for 24 years, greeting customers old and new with ebullience and, sometimes, a hug. Over the decades he has offered book recommendations and life advice to closeted young people, perplexed straight grandparents and everyone in between. “This has never been about just selling books,” Lee said. “It’s been about looking after people and the community.” The cosy inner-Sydney store has stayed open as laws and attitudes evolved; through the decriminalisation of gay sex in 1984, the height of the Aids crisis, the legalisation of same-sex marriage in 2017. Over the years, discrimination and stigma against LGBTQ people has largely, though neither entirely nor equally, given way to a more accepting world. Still, readers come to the bookstore for a window to the past, a glimpse of the future, an escape, a greater understanding of their own life. It is a place to meet and mingle, particularly for a devoted customer base of older gay men. A place to browse in peace. A haven, more than one person said. In September, owner Charles Gregory announced the store would close permanently due to financial pressures after a planned move to a new development was repeatedly delayed. Customers were bereft; surely, they thought, this community icon would be saved. But as Lee returns to his post behind the till, it is time for final goodbyes. “I’ve just been dealing with everybody’s grief for the last three months,” Lee says. What about his own feelings? “Once my final shift is done.” Reino Okkonen, 78, arrives soon after opening. He has been a customer since 1982. Back then, he lived in Double Bay with his partner, Jim, and they would walk to the bookstore on sunny Saturday mornings. They were together for 45 years. After retiring to Coffs Harbour, they ordered books by phone and would swing by the bookstore whenever they could. “I have spent a few dollars here in 40 years,” Okkonen says with a wry smile. On his first visit after Jim died, 11 years ago, he broke down in Lee’s arms. “I just held him and he cried and cried and cried,” Lee says. Okkonen is partly here to peruse the photography section one last time. But mostly, he came to thank Lee. “You don’t do that with just anybody, you know,” he says. Marc Linke, 61, thinks he first visited the bookstore in the early ’90s. The decade prior, hailing from Wollongong, he took one look at the Sydney gay scene centred around Oxford Street and thought wow. “Marc was a genuine denizen of the night,” Lee says jovially, as he scans Linke’s haul of local authors. (Accurate, Linke said.) He went on to self-publish a pseudonymous, semi-autobiographical book about his adventures in the ‘80s, titled Paris Nights. Linke was proud to have committed Oxford Street’s vivid culture to paper, even without a publisher. But then an email came out of the blue: the Bookshop Darlinghurst wanted to stock Paris Nights. It sold very well and even elicited an email from a young actor who wanted to turn it into a play. Ten minutes after Linke leaves the store, Oscar Balle-Bowness walks in. He grew up in Cairns, an isolating experience. He remembers being glared at when buying a gay magazine in his home town. Now 30, he recalls visiting the Bookshop Darlinghurst for the first time, fizzing with nerves and curiosity. “I was here looking for a birthday present for a boyfriend,” he recalls. “And I bought him a biography called Paris Nights.” When Balle-Bowness learns he has just missed Linke, he is amazed. “My boyfriend at the time was a writer and actor, and he was so inspired by the book he then turned it into a one-person play.” These serendipitous moments happen more often than you would think, Lee says. He describes a “palpable sense of transmission”, moments where you can almost reach out and touch history and culture as it travels from one generation to the next. It might be the saddest aspect of the closure, he muses. The loss of a space that encourages those spontaneous connections. “It allows that,” Lee says. “Because we’re surrounded by stories.” *** For years after his partner, Jim, died, Lee could see Okkonen’s grief whenever the longtime customer came in. It hung over him like a cloud. Before Okkonen left the store for the last time, they got talking about how it eventually lifted. “He learned he had to let go on some level,” Lee says. “Instead of being sad all the time, he had to be happy for the years he had. Which, you know – so many people have not had.” Lee recently experienced a similar shift in perspective. Work had been a slog since September, replete with uncertainty and sadness. But one day, he was putting out the sign and something flipped. Actually, I’ve had 24 amazing years here, he thought. It helped. He still has his own grief to deal with. But not until his final shift is done.

Canada bill targeting refugees feared to signal new era of US-style border policy

Canada’s Liberal government is pushing through sweeping new legislation targeting refugees that observers fear will usher in a new era of US-style border policies, fueling xenophobia and the scapegoating of immigrants. Bill C-12, or Strengthening Canada’s Immigration System and Borders Act, includes many changes around border security along with new ineligibility rules for refugee claimants. It was fast-tracked and passed through a third reading in the House of Commons on 11 December before members of parliament rose for the holidays. If it receives Senate approval in February, the bill will become law. “It’s very regressive in terms of refugee protection,” said Idil Atak, a professor of refugee and human rights law at Toronto Metropolitan University. Atak said the legislation marked an unprecedented expansion of executive power, in terms of information-sharing about refugees between government agencies and the ability to control, cancel or change immigration documents or processes. One of those changes is that asylum claims made more than one year after the claimant arrived in Canada would not be referred to the immigration and refugee board of Canada, but instead sent to an immigration officer for a pre-removal risk assessment. Such assessments depend on a single officer reading the file and have a high rate of rejection, according to a recent op-ed by 40 lawyers and legal practitioners in the Toronto Star. The authors argued that the new law evokes some disturbing eras in the country’s history around immigration law, including exclusionary policies at the turn of the 20th century which targeted specific racial groups, including south Asians and those from China and Japan. Audrey Macklin, an immigration and refugee law professor at the University of Toronto, said there were a variety of reasons why an individual might not claim asylum immediately, for example a student who is a member of a persecuted sexual minority might feel unable to return to their home country after living openly in Canada. As Canada has placed significant restrictions on international student numbers since 2024, some of those people might need to claim asylum – but would face significant barriers under the new laws. On Tuesday, the Toronto Star reported that Canada deported 18,000 people in 2024, the highest figure since the 2006-2015 government of Stephen Harper. Those deportations reportedly cost $78m – a 50% increase in costs from 2019. The pre-removal risk assessment process is one that does not give asylum seekers a fair hearing and really seeks to remove them from the country as swiftly as possible, she said. “Bill C 12 borrowed ideas from the United States about how to make it more difficult,” she said. The other element of the bill that has alarmed civil rights groups across the country is that asylum claims made at the land border with the US would also not be referred to the board if made after 14 days. Under the safe third country agreement between Canada and the US refugees are required to seek asylum in the first safe country they arrive in. But Macklin says the US has never met the requirements of being a “safe” third country. And now, as ICE raids aim to fast-track deportations without any due process, the US is proving to be “flagrantly unsafe for people to seek and obtain refugee protection”. It’s unfair to turn people away simply because they did not feel comfortable seeking asylum in the US, she says. Syed Hussan, the executive director of the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, a Canadian migrant rights advocacy organization, says the legislation is the result of the Liberal and Conservative parties pushing rhetoric that migrants are to blame for Canada’s affordability crisis. “Do you blame CEOs or corporations for their misery, which we should … but we’re all being tricked into blaming migrants,” he said. The new measures also appear as attempted capitulation toward the Trump administration to “secure” the border, in order to appease the president as Canada has yet to reach a trade deal, said Atak. But all it really did was erode Canada’s image as a welcoming country and shirk international agreements to help asylum seekers, she said. “We do have an obligation, a moral obligation, to protect refugees.”

Biography aims to fill gaps in story of ultra-libertarian Telegram founder Pavel Durov

Tech visionary, Kremlin dissident, FSB agent, free speech absolutist, health guru. These are just some of the labels admirers and critics have attached to Pavel Durov over the past decade. The Russian-born tech entrepreneur founded Russia’s version of Facebook before going on to create the messaging app Telegram, launch a cryptocurrency ecosystem and amass a multibillion-dollar fortune, all while clashing repeatedly with authorities in Russia and beyond. But much of Durov’s real story – and the logic that drives him – remains obscured. A new biography aims to change that. The Populist, by the independent Russian writer Nikolay Kononov, traces the 41-year-old’s rise from a St Petersburg schoolboy science prodigy to the founder of Telegram, one of the world’s most influential communications platforms, which has more than a billion users. Kononov describes the book as the product of a 14-year attempt to map Durov’s strategy and mindset, drawing on conversations with Durov himself and people who worked with him, as well as rivals and critics. The book’s title, he said, refers to a thread running through Durov’s life: his desire to address Telegram’s millions of users directly, allowing him to bypass institutions, the press and any system of representation. “Durov is one of the first digital populists,” Kononov said in an interview, explaining that “from the very beginning, as soon as he started making his digital products, he programmed into them the ability to write and communicate his ideas directly to his audience.”. Both VKontakte, Durov’s first venture, and Telegram have at times pushed messages from Durov directly to all users, including users who had not opted in, outlining his libertarian worldview. “He sees himself as a visionary. And obviously wants to be heard,” the author said. That strategy has helped promote Durov’s central promise – almost absolute freedom of expression – even as Telegram has become a go-to tool for dissidents, extremists, scammers and war propagandists. If Durov’s public brand is built on libertarianism, Kononov says his private management style points in the opposite direction: power concentrated in one man’s hands, with few visible checks. “He is essentially the only one making all the product decisions at Telegram,” Kononov said. “Marketing, PR – it’s a one-man show.” The portrait he draws is of a tech founder whose worldview has not wavered over the years, remaining most comfortable within an ultra-libertarian, anti-institutional strand of the right that is often misogynistic and, at times, conspiratorial. “What surprised me most is that Durov hasn’t changed or evolved in all the years that I have interviewed him,” Kononov said. Durov is not an outlier, Kononov writes, but part of a broader new wave of moguls – most visibly in the US – who pair technological dominance with an outsized sense of personal mythology and a deep suspicion of government constraint. Like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and Jeff Bezos, he has shown a strong interest in longevity science as well as pronatalism, the belief that having as many children as possible is a social or civilisational duty. Durov does not drink or use drugs, Kononov says, regularly dispenses spartan health advice – often alongside photos of him shirtless – and has said he has fathered dozens of children through sperm donation. One of the book’s most striking sections tells for the first time of Durov’s tense early meeting with President Vladimir Putin in 2013, held behind closed doors. Kononov writes that Durov described the encounter as a one-way conversation, in which the Kremlin leader reprimanded him over illegal content on Vkontakte and suggested that Durov leave the country. Under pressure from the authorities, Durov sold his stake in Vkontakte, left Russia and eventually settled in Dubai, where he founded Telegram. But the clearest mark on Durov in recent years, Kononov suggests, came not from Russia but from France. Durov, who also holds French citizenship, was detained and held for three days in France in August last year as part of an investigation into crimes linked to Telegram, including the circulation of child sexual abuse images, drug trafficking and fraudulent transactions. His detention came as a shock to the tech mogul. In interviews conducted in Paris after his arrest, Durov described to Kononov a harsh, disorienting ordeal – a permanently lit cell and little sleep – that rattled a man who had spent years insulating himself from the reach of the state. It also appears to have sharpened his hostility towards the west. Kononov says Durov now frames Europe as sliding toward “total digital control”, and increasingly conspiratorial rhetoric. Most recently, Durov appeared to endorse a conspiracy theory promoted by the far-right blogger Candace Owens, suggesting that Paris was behind the killing of Charlie Kirk. “What interests me about Durov is that, on the one hand, he clearly has a very high IQ,” Kononov said. “But at the same time, he is prone to conspiracy theories.” Kononov is adamant, however, that Durov’s views should not be conflated with formal political allegiances. One of the most persistent claims surrounding Durov is that he is secretly aligned with Russian security services. But Kononov said that in the course of his research, he found no evidence that Durov has worked with, or on behalf of, the Russian state. “He has a huge number of flaws – but not the sin of Telegram acting as a backdoor for the FSB,” Kononov said. Kononov argues that what Durov has ultimately learned is the need to compromise – with both Russian and western authorities – when it serves his interests and allows Telegram to continue operating. Kononov recalls Durov once telling him: “I never waste time on things that are unnecessary or that cannot be useful to me personally.” That self-serving mindset, Kononov said, ultimately ended their personal relationship. About a year ago, the writer asked Durov whether he saw a contradiction between Telegram’s highly centralised, almost authoritarian internal structure and his professed devotion to freedom of expression. After that, Durov stopped responding. “He quickly realised it wasn’t going to be a book to his liking,” Kononov said.