Belarus government took my Telegram

Frightening. Apparently cooperation with law enforcement has a long tail and can compromise online account recovery. There needs to be some third/online mechanism to reassert control.

Is this a telegram specific problem? Hard to know from a skim read of the translation.

Note: there is no implied commentary on the legality or illegality of what the OP did, or really even what happened once his phone was in the hands of the police: this is a comment about what happens afterward, far away back outside.

Unrelated ancient history abounds of broken account recovery mechanisms which defied reset, and so permit repeated breaking back in. It felt like the comments suggest some scripted access code held a binding open.