Messaging app Telegram blocks Alexei Navalny's chatbots during Russia elections

Russia’s elections are currently underway, with voting beginning on September 17 and set to end on Sunday, September 19. In the fray are current President, Vladimir Putin, and Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.

All of Navalny's election bots were banned during voting after the government passed an election law barring campaigning during voting.

One of the bots, Smart Voting, was only meant to identify candidates that could unseat the dominant United Russia party. It was later pulled from mobile app stores.

Telegram founder Pavel Durov spoke out against tech giants Apple and Google removing the Smart Voting mobile app from their respective app stores, calling it a "dangerous precedent" to set.

Putin and Navalny have major beef between them, with reports of an attempted assassination against the latter, linked to Russian agents, making the rounds in the past few years and now the clampdown on his election attempts.