To be more accurate: Telegram is totally unecrypted by default, unless one chooses to enter a “secret chat”, in which case you use its proprietary encryption. As such its better suited for public group chats and not for anything that needs to critical privacy, but to say it has zero encryption options is not correct.

As for “Russian”, while its CEO was born in Russia, and made his cash to initially fund it from the Russian social media VK, he has lived outside of Russia for a decade now, and Telegram is head quartered in the United Arab Emirates, with servers installed globally.