Of course he would say that. Even besides the fallaciousness of this argument (there is no equivalence between an aggressor and a victim), Pavel Durov is completely untrustworthy.

There is product stuff, like misleading claims about Telegram's encryption and comparisons to Signal. In reality, for the vast majority of chats they have plaintext, unlike Signal.

There are more subtle positioning claims. Durov made a huge deal of his "exile", but I saw Telegram's office in St Petersburg with my own two eyes a year after Durov "fled the country". It definitely wasn't shut. There were even local news of Pavel assaulting a guy in St Petersburg for trying to make a photo of him a couple years later.

And then there are just completely unnecessary lifestyle claims. He said multiple times how he doesn't take any "pills" or medications. It only takes a minute to find his old photos. Male pattern baldness doesn't stop progressing without DHT suppression, and last time I checked, finasteride comes in pills. I don't understand why would he make misleading statements about something so visible, but it doesn't make him any more trustworthy.