What Victoria Bonya is unhappy with: “military Putinism” in the face of three frustrations

The political regime of “military Putinism”—that new form that Vladimir Putin’s regime has acquired in the last five years—is today facing not yet a crisis, but definitely a crisis condensation, that is, a whole bunch of challenges, to each of which it does not have a convincing answer. This does not mean at all that the regime will not cope with them, will not be able to manage their crisis potential, avoiding too obvious demonstration of its weakness and reducing image and managerial damage. However, this situation is certainly changing the perception of citizens and elites about the potential and capabilities of the regime, undermining the mode of self-confident power that it has flaunted over the past three years.

From the point of view of the social well-being of today's Putin's Russia, this bouquet of problems can be described as three frustrations - deceived and unfulfilled expectations that change the contours of the socio-political landscape.

Military frustration

The basis of the mentioned bunch of problems, in our opinion, is, of course, not the issue of Telegram or the MAX messenger, but the fundamental fact of the Kremlin’s inability to achieve military goals in Ukraine against the backdrop of the increasing costs of war. And this despite the fact that 2025 looked like the most favorable window for this. The cessation of American aid to Kyiv, the complete mobilization of Russian economic resources for military production and the well-functioning system of commercial contracts, it would seem, created all the conditions for a decisive advance of troops and a demonstration of Russia's advantage in a war of attrition. But this did not happen - the demonstration did not take place.

An additional bonus for 2025 was the efforts of Donald Trump, who, for his part, demonstrated faith in Putin’s military machine and persuaded Vladimir Zelensky to conclude an agreement that suited Moscow in the face of its undeniable advantage. From an internal Russian perspective, this gave both Russian ordinary people and elites hope that Russia would be able to emerge from the conflict as a winner and with “little bloodshed,” having received a relaxation of the sanctions regime following the war. The strength of these expectations is reflected, in particular, in the fact that the meeting between Trump and Putin in Alaska took second place in the list of events of the year according to the Russians (only inflation and an increase in the tax burden are higher in importance). This morbid focus on the summit betrays their expectations of an almost fairy-tale resolution to the conflict, in which Putin and Russia are left with the spoils of war they acquired in Ukraine, while at the same time being largely “forgiven” by the West for the war.

By the end of 2025 - beginning of 2026, these hopes turned into deep frustration. The share of those expecting the war to end within a year dropped from just over half of respondents in February 2025 to just over a third in February 2026 (Chronicle-ExtremeScan survey data, see Table 1). In recent months, at focus groups, writes the head of the Levada Center, Denis Volkov , opinions have increasingly been voiced that there is “no end in sight” to the military actions and that the conflict may well last “another five to seven years.” Volkov believes that the failure of the “peace negotiations” was the main disappointment of the year for Russians.

The share of those who believe at the beginning of 2026 that military operations in Ukraine should be continued has decreased to a quarter of respondents, according to the Levada Center. But, perhaps, the motivations of those who believe that it is necessary to move on to peace negotiations with Ukraine (two thirds of respondents) look even more expressive: in addition to the general humanistic motive “many people are dying,” more radical statements about the war have sharply gained weight over the past year (see Table 2). “No one needs war, it’s senseless, it’s marking time, a bad peace is better”—a year ago, this kind of explanation was given by 35% of those who spoke out for peace negotiations, and at the beginning of 2026 - 59%.

Table 1. “When will the “military operation” end?”, 2025–2026, % of the number of respondents

Table 2. “Why do you think now is the time to start peace negotiations?”, 2025–2026, % of respondents

Economic frustration

The reason for the second frustration in recent months was a noticeable deterioration in the economic situation. While macroeconomists debate how close Russia is to a downturn and the onset of a recession, and to what extent a jump in oil prices will alleviate the budget crisis, at the micro level, for ordinary citizens, an immutable manifestation of the sharp deterioration has been the fact that the problem of inflation (and citizens, according to surveys, continues to believe that it is at the level of 14-15% per year) has been added to a noticeable increase in the fiscal pressure of the state.

In addition to the progressive scale of personal income tax, another and more sensitive factor was indirect pressure - through housing and communal services tariffs (mandatory payments), an increase in the recycling fee, which accelerated the prices of economy-class vehicles, an increase in fines for everything under the sun, etc. For small and small-medium businesses, the VAT increase was a big blow. But not only this: the government requires tax authorities to increase fees in order to reduce the hole in the budget, they put pressure on business, as a result, what economists call the effective tax rate increases, that is, real tax withdrawals for the same nominal requirements. Today in Russia you will hear a stream of stories from owners of beauty salons, hairdressers, various workshops and cafes about how they are either closing or are planning to close their business. And this is radically different from the situation a year ago.

However, at the macro level, the mood is little better. Economy Minister Maxim Reshetnikov, shortly after a meeting with the president, at which he demanded to return the country to economic growth, said that the economic resources for this have been largely exhausted . And the director of the Cherepovets Foundry and Mechanical Plant says that the import substitution program launched several years ago has been buried, and those who joined it were fools, because there are no resources to complete it, and demand is falling. Reshetnikov admits that Russian business is in a difficult situation. In fact, this is determined by a combination of three factors operating simultaneously: a sharp contraction of the budget impulse in the non-military economy, an increase in the tax burden, and the fact that the key rate of the Central Bank still remains at a high level as a result of moderate successes in the fight against inflation. Three dark sides - and not a single bright side for business.

However, technical details aside, the core of the second frustration is the revelation of the fact that the miracle of the Russian economy’s resilience in the face of war and sanctions turned out to be extremely dependent (what a surprise!) on the availability of accumulated or newly received rent from energy exports, especially oil. With the exhaustion of this source, the carriage of the sovereign economy, turning east, began to turn into a pumpkin before our eyes.

No, Russia is not yet experiencing an economic crisis at all. Rather, we are witnessing a crisis in the political economy of military Putinism of the 2022–2025 model. The regime's geopolitical exercises do not affect the vital interests of citizens and businesses if they can be paid for with oil rent. If not, then their continuation is possible only by withdrawing money from citizens and businesses. And this creates a new situation for all parties, and the failure of hopes for a successful end to the war last year takes on a new meaning.

Elite frustration

The economic pressure has so far been felt mainly by middle-income people, and those with above-average incomes are still doing well economically: their war dividend has been significant and has not yet been eaten away. But it was for them that the decisive war declared by the Kremlin on Telegram came as a frustrating shock. The Kremlin’s intention to transfer them from Telegram to MAX is essentially an even greater humiliation than the intention of Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov in the late 1990s to transfer government bureaucracy from foreign cars to Russian cars.

From spring until almost the end of 2025, Russia was immersed in endless waves of mobile Internet blocking. The FSB tested its ability to disable it without causing damage to critical infrastructure, and so-called whitelists. However, such a large-scale mockery of citizens did not lead to the protest consolidation that we see today.

There were several reasons for this. The blackouts were random and unsynchronized, felt like something extraordinary and temporary, and occurred against the backdrop of high expectations regarding the speedy and successful end of “all this” (the war and the inconveniences associated with it). But the main thing is that they did not affect the capitals and the elite. In Moscow there were problems with navigation, but there were no special problems with the communication environment and digital comfort. Everything was left at my fingertips. The Kremlin’s current intention to block both Telegram and VPN, especially against the backdrop of growing military and economic frustrations, has become an all too clear sign of the successful and generally relatively loyal elite class being transplanted from the carriage to the pumpkin, not temporarily, but forever.

No, I don’t want to say at all that blocking Telegram and fighting VPNs only hits elite communities. On the contrary, this is a blow to the universal communication environment, which is equally used by different segments of society. Moreover, this is another blow in a series of blows already dealt - the slowdown of YouTube, the degradation of WhatsApp - which were perceived as very sensitive in non-elite Russia. However, in this case, the elite groups are in the same boat, and this gives the situation a whole new dimension.

Conspiracy theories, according to which Instagram diva Victoria Bonya made her claims against the Kremlin in agreement with the “civilian” part of the presidential administration, look both absurd and justified at the same time. The point is not whether Bonya coordinated her speech, but that the emotions of her audience (“the people”) and her circle of friends and interests (“the elite”) are very close in this case. These emotions are by no means oppositional and can be described as “loyalist contestation.”

This is a specific intra-regime conflict, the essence of which, as a rule, is incomprehensible, and is as follows. For four years, both Victoria Boni’s followers—the “people” (more than 10 million people on Instagram, which was officially banned by the Russian authorities five years ago) and her circle of friends—the “elite” (in the broad sense) remained relatively loyal to Putin’s war and regime, despite the fact that they had access to Instagram, Telegram, and VPN. And this access was in a sense a bonus, a certain comfort that they had for their conscious loyalty. For what reason are they now forcibly deprived of this bonus and this important element of the status quo of their loyalty?

The reason for the regime’s “attack” on Victoria Bonya, her subscribers and her friends is generally obvious - it is its inability to cope with the challenges described above in the military and economic spheres. This is what makes him “attack” loyal subjects, seizing both their resources (money) through tax and administrative restrictions, and their privileges of conscious loyalty. In the new circumstances, the regime quite reasonably begins to doubt them. But this becomes the cause of an almost open intra-regime conflict.