Russian blogger’s fierce critique of Kremlin goes viral: ‘People are afraid of you’

The Kremlin is grappling with the fallout from the viral spread of a celebrity blogger’s criticism of Russian authorities, as Vladimir Putin’s approval ratings register their sixth consecutive weekly decline.Victoria Bonya, a household name in Russia who rose to fame in 2006 on Dom-2, the country’s answer to the reality TV show Big Brother, posted a video on Monday warning the Russian president that a string of mounting problems risked spiralling out of control.“The people are afraid of you, artists are afraid, governors are afraid,” she said, in the 18-minute video on Instagram, which has garnered 26m views and more than 1.3m likes in the past four days.She rattled off a list of issues she said no regional governor would dare raise with Putin directly: flooding in Dagestan, oil pollution along the Black Sea coast, livestock culls in Siberia, internet blackouts and a squeeze on small businesses from rising prices and taxes.Victoria Bonya’s video lists numerous problems that she blames on the Kremlin’s poor governance. Photograph: victroriabonya/Instagram“You know what the risk is?” asked Bonya, who lives outside Russia. “That people will stop being afraid, ​and they’re being squeezed into a coiled spring, and that one day that coiled spring will shoot out.”Moscow on Thursday took the unusual step of ​publicly acknowledging the sharp criticism, saying work was under ‌way to address problems identified by Bonya.The influencer’s comments notably stopped short of directly targeting Putin himself or the war in Ukraine, prompting speculation that the intervention may have been coordinated with Moscow to signal that public grievances are being heard before parliamentary elections later this year.The approach fits a familiar Kremlin playbook: casting Putin as the “good tsar” kept in the dark by errant officials. The narrative has helped the president deflect blame for the country’s problems on to subordinates, preserving his personal standing even as discontent grows.Political analysts, however, said the outburst was unlikely to have been coordinated, but rather reflected a spontaneous reaction to simmering discontent across the country.“War fatigue is really starting to set in,” said Andrei Kolesnikov, a Moscow-based political scientist and author of a recent book on Putin’s ideology. “It is beginning to click in people’s minds that everything that is happening is a consequence of the war.”Kolesnikov added that it had become increasingly difficult for the authorities to explain away the war’s impact on everyday life, from the economic slowdown to tightening internet restrictions.Abbas Galyamov, an exiled former Putin adviser, said public appeals from Russian celebrities such as Bonya could lead to further discontent among society. “Bonya is bringing a fundamentally new audience into the opposition camp that wasn’t there before,” he said.“Their dissatisfaction is also growing, there are problems with the internet, prices in stores are rising, the war is getting on their nerves. The state is intruding into their private lives,” he said.Putin’s approval and trust ratings have slipped to their lowest levels since the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, according to a string of recent opinion polls from state and independent organisations.At a meeting with top officials on Wednesday, the president tacitly acknowledged strains in the economy, pressing the government and the central bank to explain why performance has fallen short of expectations this year.Putin is also facing simmering anger from the hawkish community of pro-war bloggers, some of whom embed with frontline units, who have grown increasingly frustrated with Moscow’s slow progress on the battlefield and mounting losses.Andrey Filatov, a reporter for Russia Today, wrote this week: “Actual losses are either concealed entirely or spread out over time, creating the impression at the top that the situation is not so critical. As a result, the army is not adapting.”