The American symbol being too fat to fly is so poetic im shedding tears

The current rumor being spread on Russian channels is that Durov went to France knowing that he would be arrested in order to avoid extradition to the US. Apparently Durov believed that the US government would be coming after him, for much the same reason as the French government. He apparently believes that in France he will have a better chance of cutting a favorable deal to protect himself from serious jail time, while avoiding the possibility of extradition to the US because France does not respond to extradition requests of French citizens.

My schizoid take on this is:
He gave himself up deliberately. He has been avoiding european airports because he knows he might get arrested for not complying with EU legislation about online moderation.

So why did he just casually fly to one now? He is fleeing from something. Probably because telegram DOES have a lot of ordinary russians talking about the War, and the war has been going pretty shit recently. There is probably a lot of pressure on telegram to filter out any anti-kremlin/anti-putin posts, and recently there have been a lot more calls to getting rid of the government.

It might be that Pavel Durov has some info, that Moscow is moving against him. Maybe he has ended on moscow's shit-list because of all the anti-putin talk on the Telegram. he also knows that The next few years there is going to be big falldown in Russia due to the war, and the whole Putin's government might collapse. Maybe he knows he's about the get defenestrated. Or maybe even Prighozined if he flies too close to SAM battery.

So he runs away. Goes to Paris, gets arrested. Acts all surprised, but is glad that as he is a french citizen, they won't give him back to Russia. He gets to talk some nice deal with the French, maybe give some backdoor to Russian military communications (this is what Moscow is afraid of) and then spend the next few years in a nice and secure prison, out of the reach of Moscow's goons. And just wait for all of this to blow over.

He knew what he was doing. He wanted an out, and French obliged.

Oof they arrested the founder of Telegram