Pawel Durov founded Telegram. Image: imago-images.de / instagram
Pavel Durov became very rich with the messenger Telegram and the Russian Facebook counterpart VKontakte. Now he is using his sperm to fight the global decline in birth rates.
December 29, 2025, 07:07December 29, 2025, 07:07
The 41-year-old Russian already has six children of his own from a relationship and, according to his own statements, he is the biological father of over 100 others who were conceived through sperm donations.
But Durow, whose fortune is estimated at $17 billion, doesn’t have enough – on the contrary: like them Daily Mail reports, Durov offers women under 37 years of age free in-vitro fertilization – i.e. artificial insemination – via a Moscow clinic that still has the 41-year-old’s previous sperm donations in stock. However, he only covers the costs of fertilization if the women use his sperm for fertilization.
The offer is obviously generating great interest. A doctor who works for the Moscow clinic told the Wall Street Journal explains that numerous women registered with the clinic. According to the doctor who carried out examinations on the possible donation recipients, they were attractive, well-educated and very healthy.
“They wanted a child from, well, a certain kind of man. They saw that kind of father figure as the right one.”
Like other oligarchs, Durov is concerned about the global decline in birth rates, which has spread to Asia as well as America and Europe. He also sees the reason as the fact that the sperm quality of men is decreasing worldwide. He attributes this to growing environmental pollution and, in particular, the influence of plastics and chemicals entering the human body.
He wants to counteract this with his own sperm donations. According to his own statements, Durow started donating sperm in 2010 after helping a friend who was unable to father children.
Durov is an illustrious figure. He was a pioneer in Russia with his social media services and was therefore also called the “Russian Mark Zuckerberg”. In 2014, he came into conflict with the Russian government because he refused to enforce certain censorship measures on VKontake, including against the now deceased Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny. After his apartment was searched, he fled abroad and has been living as a digital nomad ever since.
In 2024, he was briefly arrested in France, of which he now has citizenship, because the French justice system accused him of not cooperating enough with the authorities in the fight against criminals and against the spread of false information on Telegram. He then promised to moderate content more. (con)