Some Russian influencers have recently issued public appeals to President Vladimir Putin, criticizing his government and policies, and many of his loyalists have threatened rebellion – the latest wave of public anger over the country’s strained wartime economy and growing internet restrictions.
While none of this dissent signals an imminent threat to Putin’s rule, analysts say it presents a new and growing challenge to the Kremlin.
“Maintaining the status quo requires greater and greater effort,” Mark Galeotti, an expert on Russian politics who heads the Mayak intelligence consultancy, wrote in an analysis.
Here’s a look at the public outrage in Russia and what’s driving it:
The influential appeal to Putin, while his approval rating declines
Popular Russian blogger Victoria Bonya’s 19-minute video 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 that Putin had been misinformed about a few things – local authorities’ poor handling of recent floods in the southern province of Dagestan, livestock killings in Siberia that fueled farmers’ protests, internet restrictions and stress on small businesses.
Bonya, a popular Russian TV host who now lives abroad, insists she supports Putin, but says ordinary Russians and her own authorities are too afraid to tell her the truth.
“There’s a lot you don’t know,” she said. “People are screaming at the top of their lungs right now. They’ve been robbed of everything they have, and they’re continuing 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 public criticism, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Kremlin officials had seen the video and that “a lot of work is being done” on the issues Bonya mentioned. “None of this is overlooked,” Peskov said.
Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, a longtime Putin supporter, criticized the government in a speech to parliament on Tuesday and said his party had raised the issue before. He threatened a repeat of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution if measures were not taken to resolve the problems.
Predictions of coups are also regularly issued by pro-Kremlin Telegram channels and loyalist military bloggers.
Meanwhile, Russian state-controlled pollster VTsIOM has reported a steady decline in Putin’s approval ratings in recent weeks. Data released Friday put his approval rating at 65.6%, the lowest level pollsters have reported before the war in Ukraine, down from 77.8% in late December 2025.
Russia’s top independent pollster, the Levada Center, also reported a slight drop in Putin’s approval rating, from 85% in October 2025 to 80% in March.
Internet restrictions trigger a wave of discontent
Russians in the vast country have faced regular cellphone internet shutdowns since last spring. Officials have justified them as a way to thwart Ukrainian drone attacks, but critics have argued that they are another step in years of efforts to bring the internet under tighter government control.
The shutdowns come on top of widespread, ever-increasing internet censorship that has seen thousands of websites and platforms blocked or throttled in Russia over the years, including two of the 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 blocking VPNs to prevent widespread censorship fraud.
Public frustration with the measures sparked acts of resistance, including petitions to the presidential administration, class-action lawsuits against the government, some street pickets and several attempts to organize large protests that were dismissed by authorities.
The Kremlin appears unsettled. At a government meeting on Thursday, Putin again justified the shutdown as necessary to “prevent terrorist attacks” and urged authorities to better inform the public about the restrictions.
Her comments indicate that the security services are “doing everything right, and it will continue as long as they see fit,” Tatiana Stanovaya of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center wrote in a Telegram post.
A stressed economy increases frustration
The critical videos emerged at a time of heightened stress in the country’s wartime economy.
Economic growth stalled after an initial boost from massive military spending. High interest rates and tax hikes imposed by the central bank to control inflation have also affected businessmen.
Economy Minister Maxim Reshetnikov recently said the economy’s reserves had “decreased significantly” and Putin said in a televised government meeting earlier this month that economic growth had fallen for two months in a row. Russia’s gross domestic product contracted by 1.8% between January and February, he said.
Denis Volkov, director of the Levada Center, said economic problems are the main driver of growing disaffection and declining approval of Putin and the government.
“It starts to show in opinion polls, when the mood starts to turn bad, just because life is hard,” Volkov said.
There is no end to the war in Ukraine
Sam Green, a professor of Russian politics at King’s College London, also shows that hopes of an early end to Russia’s war in Ukraine, now in its fifth year, are fading.
Those hopes coalesced after US President Donald Trump took office in January 2025 and led efforts to negotiate a stalled peace deal.
“The Kremlin really put some weight behind that idea as well. And I think that became valuable in public opinion,” Green said. “And still it’s not happening.”
The resulting disappointment and frustration means that Putin “has to pay a small price.”
There is no imminent death for Putin either
“None of this can be heralded as the imminent end of Putin’s rule,” Galeotti said in his analysis.
There is “no meaningful organized opposition” and Putin’s “control of the security apparatus is inescapable,” Gelotti said. On war, “even his critics don’t want to destabilize the country.”
Volkov echoed that sentiment and said discontent builds slowly. Putin’s approval rating is falling “from a very high point.”
“For now, we should not underestimate or exaggerate it, because we are only at the beginning of the road,” he said.
Meanwhile, frustration will deepen, with people feeling empowered by popular public figures who criticize them, said Abbas Galyamov, a former Putin speechwriter turned political analyst.
“The sense of power in politics,” he said, “is largely tied to how broad a position you share and defend.”
