A court in Kazakhstan has banned the Telegram dating chatbot Divinchik. The ruling was issued by the Alatau District Court of Almaty following a request from the district prosecutor, Tengri News reported. The court said the decision has been sent to the authorized body for execution.
The prosecutor's office argued that the bot operated without age restrictions and had no age identification systems. According to the agency, this led to real crimes: in April 2025, a minor born in 2007 met a suspect through Divinchik and had sexual relations with him.
Divinchik/Leo previously appeared in the Russian case against Telegram founder Pavel Durov. The Investigative Committee mentioned the bot as a platform where Ukrainian intelligence services allegedly recruit minors for sabotage. In December 2025, the service was added to Russia's register of banned websites.
On August 13, a major Telegram outage was recorded in Kazakhstan: media failed to load and messages did not arrive. There was no global outage, and the messenger worked via VPN, leading experts to suggest a blockade by authorities. Operator Kazakhtelecom reported a sharp drop in Telegram traffic at international peering points in Frankfurt and Moscow.