A survey conducted by the FOM public opinion research institute close to the Kremlin showed that only 71 percent Russians trust their president – which is a decrease of 5 pp (percentage points). This is the largest decline since 2019, as analyzed by the American Institute of War Studies (ISW).
Rather, Putin's support in FOM polls dropped already at the beginning of February – when the Kremlin restricted access to the Telegram instant messenger. The state is increasingly blocking competitive and foreign websites, such as Telegram and WhatsApp, and is taking action against virtual private networks (VPNs) that enable the bypassing of blockades.
Instead, the Kremlin encourages the Russian population to use the state-promoted MAX messenger. But Russians are immune to Putin's games.
The domestic messenger is allegedly necessary because other countries' intelligence services have infiltrated foreign apps. However, this was met with resistance: oppositionists fear that the Russian security services have access to data from the MAX application and analyze different opinions.
As reported by the Reuters news agency, MAX belongs to the VK company, headed by the son of a close confidant of Putin. VK reported that the app has gained 107 million users since its launch a year ago. The head of the TelecomDaily news portal, Denis Kuskow, criticizes this coercion. “Installing an app or using a service should be a personal decision,” he says.
Telegram founder Pavel Durov stated last week that 65 million Russians still use Telegram via VPN every day. According to media reports, the Kremlin's attempts to prevent these accesses and block IP addresses also led to failures in banks. Banking applications were temporarily down and payment traffic was restricted.
Putin 'becoming toxic'
Not long ago, no one would have dared to say it out loud – today it is said outright. Pro-Kremlin military bloggers are starting to call Putin a burden that is dragging the system down. They also admit that Ukraine is not only defending itself on the front: it is increasingly taking the initiative and imposing the terms of the game.
Yuri Podolaka hosts an extremely popular news program on Telegram. His online profiles are followed by approximately 2 million 800 thousand people. subscribers, making him one of the most important Russian military bloggers.
However, his Sunday report turns upside down the current narrative that has been repeated like a mantra for years. This is no longer a minor correction of the message, but a clear signal that something in this image is starting to fall apart – and this is happening before everyone's eyes.
Podolaka thus joined the growing group of Russian commentators who – at the risk of up to 15 years in prison – are starting to say things that not long ago could have made one disappear without a trace.
This is no longer a minor disruption, but a process that is beginning to encompass the entire system – a signal that Putin's situation is increasingly looking like a dead end with no exit..
Russia is scraping the bottom. And Putin's man wants to tighten the screw even more
Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska has proposed introducing a 12-hour working day, including Saturdays, to revitalize the country's economy. Especially since crisis follows crisis.
To save the economy from a new global crisis, Deripaska proposed that Russians switch to a work schedule from 8 to 20 and work on Saturdays.
– We don't have many resources. More precisely, we only have one, and it is related to our national characteristic: in difficult times we are able to pull ourselves together and work harder. And the sooner we switch to this new schedule ourselves – from 8 to 20, including Saturday – the faster we will undergo this transformation – he emphasizes. “The crisis is deeper,” the oligarch admits.
