Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram, revealed that he was a target of a suspected poisoning attack in 2018. It left him paralysed, and he believed he was dying.
In an interview with podcaster Lex Fridman, the millionaire CEO claimed that after returning to his rental home and discovering a "weird neighbour" had left something at his door, he began to feel excruciating pain throughout his body.
“That was the only moment in my life that I felt like I was dying,” the Moscow-born entrepreneur told Fridman on Monday.
He described how his physiological "functions … started to switch off," his breathing became impossible, and his vision and hearing rapidly deteriorated. He claimed to have fallen to the ground and only woke up the following day, when he was too weak to get up.
Durov claimed that for around two weeks, he was unable to walk because blood vessels all over his body had burst. He claimed to have lost his hearing and eyesight before he began experiencing respiratory difficulties.
“One hour later, when I was already in my bed, I felt very bad. I felt pain all over my body. I tried to get up and go to the bathroom. But while I was going there, I felt the functions of my body started to switch off,” he said.
“Everything is accompanied by very acute pain. Heart, stomach, all blood vessels. It is difficult to explain, but one thing I was certain about was, ‘yeah, this is it,'” Durov added.
Left immobile, Durov thought he was dying.
“I couldn't breathe, I couldn't see anything, it was very painful,” he remarked, before adding, “I thought it was over… Then I collapsed on the floor.”
For years, Durov kept the shocking information a secret because he was working on a blockchain that could be used with his messaging app and was afraid that sharing his health would cause issues, according to The New York Post.
He clarified that he took this action to prevent panic or to jeopardise Telegram's progress, particularly as he and his team were trying to raise money for their blockchain project, TON.
Although Durov did not specifically blame any state actor, experts have compared it to earlier poisonings of Russian dissidents, including the 2018 poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal and the subsequent poisoning of Alexei Navalny.
According to investigative journalist Christo Grozev, Durov's symptoms are compatible with exposure to nerve agents.
