Messaging app Telegram is suffering outages owing to “unprecedented” user demand for its services in Europe, following Russia’s attack on Ukraine on Thursday morning, according to founder and CEO Pavel Durov.
“Due to today’s events, the European Telegram cluster is facing an unprecedented load. As a result, some users may experience intermittent short-term outages in a number of Telegram services,” Durov said on his own Telegram channel.
The tech mogul said he was aware that many people were in dire need of reliable communications with their loved ones after the morning’s events.
“We will do our best to keep the speed of sending and receiving messages high,” he added.
The app’s service outages come after Russia launched a military attack on neighboring Ukraine early on Thursday – an offensive President Vladimir Putin claimed was in support of the leaders of the breakaway Donbass republics.
The assault comes days after Moscow recognized the independence of the Donetsk and Lugansk republics, alleging Kiev had failed to implement its obligations under the Minsk agreements, struck in 2014 and 2015, to resolve the conflict between separatists and the Ukrainian government.