Some Russian influencers recently released public appeals to President Vladimir Putin, criticizing his government and policies, and a number of his loyalists even threatened a revolt — the latest wave of public outcry over the country's strained wartime economy and mounting internet restrictions.
While none of this dissent indicates an imminent threat to Putin’s rule, analysts say it presents a new and growing challenge for the Kremlin.
“Greater and
greater effort needs to be spent on maintaining the status quo,” Mark Galeotti, an expert on Russian politics who heads the Mayak Intelligence consultancy, wrote in an analysis.
Here’s a look at the public outcry in Russia and what is driving it:
A 19-minute video by popular Russian blogger Victoria Bonya has received 31 million views on Instagram since it was published 10 days ago.
In the video, Bonya, who has 13.6 million followers on the platform, complained to Putin that he was probably misinformed about some things — local authorities' poor handling of recent floods in the southern province of Dagestan, the culling of livestock in Siberia that prompted protests from farmers, crippling internet restrictions and strains on small businesses.
Bonya, a popular Russian TV host who now lives abroad, emphasized that she supports Putin, but she said ordinary Russians and his own officials are too scared to tell him the truth.
“There’s a lot you don’t know,” she said. “People are screaming at the top of their lungs now. They’ve been robbed of everything they have, and they continue to be robbed. Businesses are dying.”
Reactions to the video snowballed. Other Russian influencers aired similar sentiments in their videos, some of which were later deleted.
In a rare acknowledgment of the public criticism, Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Kremlin officials saw the video and that “a lot of work is being done” on the issues Bonya mentioned. “None of it is being ignored,” Peskov said.
Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, a longtime Putin supporter, lambasted the government Tuesday in a speech to parliament, saying that his party had raised the issues before. He threatened a repeat of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution if measures are not taken to deal with the problems.
Forecasts of a revolt also have been regularly floated in pro-Kremlin Telegram channels and by loyal military bloggers.
In the meantime, Russian state-controlled pollster VTsIOM has reported a consistent decline of Putin’s approval ratings in recent weeks. Data released Friday showed his approval at 65.6%, the lowest level the pollster has reported since before the war in Ukraine, down from the 77.8% in late December 2025.
Russia's top independent pollster, the Levada Center, also reported a slight decline in Putin's approvals, from 85% in October 2025 to 80% in March.
Russians across the vast country have faced regular cellphone internet shutdowns since last spring. The authorities have justified them as a way to thwart Ukrainian drone attacks, but critics have argued that the outages are another step in a yearslong effort to bring the internet under tight government control.
The shutdowns came on top of sweeping, ever-growing internet censorship that over the years saw thousands of websites and platforms in Russia blocked or throttled, including the two most popular messaging apps — WhatsApp and Telegram.
Authorities are promoting a new state-backed messaging app, Max, seen by many as a surveillance tool, while also blocking VPNs to stop widespread censorship circumvention.
Public frustration over the measures elicited acts of resistance, including petitions to the presidential administration, a class-action lawsuit against the government, a few street pickets and multiple attempts to organize bigger protests that were quashed by authorities.
The Kremlin appears unfazed. At a government meeting Thursday, Putin again justified the shutdowns as necessary to “prevent terror attacks” and urged authorities to better inform the public about restrictions.
His remarks indicate that the security services “are doing everything correctly, and it will continue for as long as they see fit," Tatiana Stanovaya of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center wrote in a Telegram post.
The critical videos have emerged at a time of growing strain on the country’s wartime economy.
Economic growth stopped after the initial boost from massive military spending wore off. High interest rates imposed by the central bank to control inflation and increased taxes have also weighed on businesses.
Economic Minister Maxim Reshetnikov said recently that the economy's reserves “have been largely depleted,” and Putin said at a televised government meeting earlier this month that economic growth has declined for two months in a row. Russia's gross domestic product shrank by 1.8% between January and February, he said.
Denis Volkov, director of the Levada Center, said economic problems are the main driver of the growing dissatisfaction and declining approval for Putin and the government.
“It begins to show in the opinion polls, when the mood starts to get worse, just because life becomes harder,” Volkov said.
Sam Greene, professor of Russian politics at King's College London, also points to dwindling hopes that Russia’s war in Ukraine, now in its fifth year, could soon end.
Those hopes coalesced after U.S. President Donald Trump took office in January 2025 and spearheaded an effort to negotiate a peace deal that has since stalled.
“The Kremlin was really putting some weight behind that idea as well. And I think that became priced into public opinion,” Greene said. “And yet that’s not happening."
The resulting disappointment and frustration means that Putin “pays a bit of a price.”
Galeotti said in his analysis that “none of this can be taken to herald the imminent end of Putin’s rule.”
There is “no meaningful organized opposition,” and Putin’s “control of the security apparatus is unchallenged," Galeotti said. In a war, "even his critics do not want to destabilize the country.”
Volkov echoed that thinking and said the discontent grows only slowly. Putin’s approvals are declining “from a very high point.”
“For now, we shouldn’t downplay or exaggerate this, because we’re only at the very beginning of the road,” he said.
In the meantime, frustration will continue to deepen, with people feeling empowered by popular public figures voicing criticism, said Abbas Gallyamov, a former Putin speechwriter turned political analyst.
“The feeling of power in politics," he said, "is largely tied to how widespread the position that you share and defend is.”
