Nah. They jumped on a rare opportunity to present themselves as the proponents of the free speech. And surely there is an ulterior motive to gain more control over Durov and Telegram.

Telegram's premier feature are channels and there are multitude of popular ones deeply critical of the Putin's regime (and there are a lot of pro-government or state-controlled ones).

Telegram is de facto the biggest (meta) source with at least a modicum of free speech in Russia.