What is REDO?
REDO was drawn and named by Telegram founder Pavel Durov in 2018. Its full name is Resistance Dog, a dog with a hat.
According to X user ttty, REDO first appeared in the 2009 internal movement against Putin in Russia. On that day, Durov received an email from the Kremlin asking him to cooperate in closing Alexei Navalny's VK account and provide relevant account data.
Durov replied with a photo of a puppy with its tongue out and wearing a blue sweatshirt. Fearing that the other party would not understand, he added: "This is my reply."
In 2014, civil unrest broke out in Ukraine, and Russian troops entered the Crimean Peninsula. After that, Crimea seceded from Ukraine and joined Russia through a referendum. One day, Durov received another email asking him to hand over the information of a Ukrainian politician.
Durov said this was difficult, my mother is Ukrainian, my father is Russian - "these two countries are probably the two closest relatives in the big family of nations." - he didn't want to stand on either side.
So he replied with two photos of puppies. "
So far, the image of a dog wearing a hat has become the spiritual totem of Telegram, and in many subsequent tweets, Telegram officials have also interacted with REDO resistance dogs.
Therefore, REDO has been the (un)official mascot of Telegram's vision of "resisting" censorship since then.