By Andrew Osborn and Dmitry Antonov, Reuters, 4/16/26

MOSCOW, April 16 (Reuters) – The Kremlin took the unusual step of ​publicly acknowledging sharp criticism of the authorities from a celebrity blogger on Thursday, saying work was under ‌way to address a slew of problems identified by social media influencer Viktoria Bonya.

Bonya, who is well known inside Russia for her appearances on reality TV shows and other programmes, has a huge social media following, and a video appeal she made to President Vladimir Putin this week was ​watched more than 20 million times and liked over 1 million times on Instagram.

In her video appeal, Bonya – who ​lives outside Russia – said she supported Putin, but said that officials were not telling him the ⁠truth about the country’s real problems, that the Russian people were suffering, and that they were being squeezed so hard ​by corrupt officials that they might one day erupt.

“You know what the risk is?” she said. “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.”

KREMLIN SAYS WORK IS BEING DONE

Among other things, she spoke out against a sweeping crackdown on the internet, social media and messenger apps, accused the authorities of being too slow to respond ​to floods in Dagestan, and said they had mishandled the outbreak this year of a cattle disease in Siberia that led ​to an unpopular culling.

“The people are afraid of you,” she told Putin. “There is a big wall between the people and you,” she said, ‌blaming regional ⁠governors, government officials and lawmakers for not telling Putin the truth about what was going on.

Instagram, like Facebook, is banned in Russia but Russians are able to watch it using virtual private networks.

When asked about Bonya’s public appeal, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “Of course, we’ve seen it. It’s quite popular.”

“It touches on many topics, on each of which, as you can see – as ​you have seen – work is ​actually being done,” he said.

“But, ⁠to be fair, a great deal of work is being done on them, a large number of people are involved, and none of this has been overlooked,” he added.

BLOGGER SAYS SHE ​IS ACTING FOR RUSSIANS

The idea of Putin as “a good Tsar” misinformed by nefarious officials is ​not a new ⁠one, and Kremlin critics suggested that Bonya’s appeal may have been coordinated with the authorities to let people feel that their problems are being aired and dealt with ahead of parliamentary elections later this year.

Her strongly worded outburst also came as some senior Kremlin ⁠officials and ​business-oriented former officials and bankers had, according to a source, lobbied Putin about their ​discontent over mobile internet shutdowns and a move to block the Telegram messaging platform.

Bonya said the initiative to publicly appeal to Putin was solely her own ​and that she was acting on behalf of the Russian people.

***

‘The People Are Afraid of You’: In Rare Appeals, Celebrities Ask Putin to Address Russians’ Suffering

Moscow Times, 4/16/26

Russian influencers and public figures have issued a series of rare appeals to President Vladimir Putin, saying many Russians are afraid to speak up about problems they face and criticizing what they called “an intention to bring us back to the U.S.S.R.” 

The appeals began when blogger and influencer Viktoria Bonya called on Putin to address mounting social and economic pressures that have dominated national headlines in recent weeks.

“The people are afraid of you, artists are afraid, governors are afraid,” she said, adding that she was not.

“There is a huge wall between you and us ordinary people, and I want to break through that wall,” she said in the 18-minute video, which has garnered 24.1 million views and over 1 million likes in the past two days.

“We consider you an excellent politician, but there is a lot you don’t know,” said Bonya, who is best known for appearing on the popular reality TV show Dom-2 (“House-2”) and lives outside Russia.

She listed issues “that no governor would tell” Putin about, including devastating flooding in Dagestan, oil pollution along the Black Sea coast, the culling of livestock in Siberia and internet shutdowns, as well as rising prices and tax burdens on small businesses.

“People are screaming out loud right now. They’ve been stripped of their last resources and they continue to lose more. Businesses are dying,” she said. “People are googling how to leave Russia. It’s one of the most popular search queries right now.”

As the video went viral, some viewers speculated that she could be aligning herself with the Russian opposition or was even acting on the instruction of foreign intelligence.

“I’m not some opposition figure. I never have been and I don’t plan to be. I’m just a person with a heart,” Bonya said in response to interview requests from exiled media. She later said she had not been paid to record the appeal.

Other critics questioned whether the appeals to Putin were actually a PR campaign aimed at portraying him as a “strong president” unaware of problems on the ground or a more nuanced signal from competing factions seeking to ease restrictions in Russia.

Public criticism of Putin or government policies can lead to prosecution and blacklisting by the authorities for both celebrities and ordinary citizens.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Thursday said Bonya had brought up “very significant issues,” but that authorities were already working to address them. 

“We have seen the video. It is quite popular and has received a large number of views,” Peskov said, adding that “none of these [problems] have been left without attention.” 

Also on Wednesday, popular blogger Aiza (also known as Aiza-Liluna Ai or Aiza Dolmatova) posted an eight-minute video in which she sharply criticized corruption among lawmakers as well as rising taxes and utility tariffs.

In the since-deleted clip, Aiza suggested that Putin is likely “not actually aware” of what is happening and only receives information from specially prepared briefings.

The next day, she said she had “simply wanted to support people” and later deleted the video because of the media attention and “threats” she received.

“I’m very scared,” she said. “I didn’t say anything bad or anything that isn’t already in the media.”

Even pro-Kremlin actor Ivan Okhlobystin, who once described the full-scale invasion of Ukraine as a “holy war,” joined in the appeals to the Kremlin leader, calling the clampdown on the internet and foreign social media platforms “a huge mistake.”

“If they want to bring us back to the U.S.S.R., then a time machine would need to be built first. Without that, it simply won’t work,” he said.

“The very idea of restricting access to information for our science and culture is beyond comprehension,” he added. “Nothing can truly be ‘restricted’ these days — we live in the 21st century — and this lack of understanding will only further damage reputations.”

Putin’s approval rating has fallen to its lowest level (67.8%) since the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine amid the internet shutdowns, messaging app restrictions and price increases, the state polling agency VtSIOM said. 

The public’s dissatisfaction with tightening internet restrictions has prompted some officials to warn of “political and economic risks” from the measures, Bloomberg reported this week. 

Political analyst Stanislav Belkovsky said Bonya’s appeal fits the classic “Good tsar, bad boyars” narrative, in which problems are blamed on lower-level officials rather than the leader.

“To the all-powerful grandfather, generous and kind-hearted, who has simply become slightly lost in technological modernity — from a sweet granddaughter who still loves him and empathizes with him,” he said.

Political scientist and former Putin speechwriter Abbas Gallyamov said the appeals reflect “tectonic shifts” in Russian society.

“Many people in the opposition …are reacting to all this with mockery,” he said. “That is completely unfair, because [Bonya] is bringing a fundamentally new audience into the opposition camp that wasn’t there before.”

Nor did he believe the claims that the appeals were orchestrated by the Kremlin.

“She will bring with her people who previously had no interest in politics. Their dissatisfaction is also growing — there are problems with the internet, prices in stores are rising, the war is getting on their nerves, everything in general is exhausting them and the state is, so to speak, intruding into their private lives,” he said.

“Bonya is, in a way, a marker that this is a trend — people feel that they are not alone, that there are prominent figures who express emotions similar to their own,” he said.

By Andrew Korybko, Substack, 4/13/26

Orban’s “democratic ouster” is expected to remove Hungary’s procedural opposition to the EU’s planned €90 billion loan to Ukraine that’ll be financed by members raising common debt. RT published a detailed article about this plan here last December, which was a compromise for financing this loan after the bloc failed to reach a consensus to either outright confiscate some of Russia’s frozen assets for giving to Ukraine or use at least some of them as collateral for a loan to it. Readers can learn more here and here.

If everything goes according to plan, and Bloomberg reported that the bloc plans to move swiftly after Hungary held everything up for several months already, then this move risks funding a forever war. Hopes of a military breakthrough along the front or a diplomatic breakthrough in US-mediated talks have yet to materialize, so the pace of Russia’s on-the-ground advance remains glacial, thus meaning that it could take years to achieve Russia’s reported minimum goal of obtaining control over all of Donbass.

Funding two-thirds of the Ukrainian budget for the next two years per the EU’s goal would likely lead to another two-year round being agreed in order to encourage the US to continue its military aid. Ever since last summer, the US no longer donates arms to Ukraine but instead sells them to NATO, which then transfers them there. Even if Trump suspends these sales, so long as the Ukrainian budget is financed and nothing major changes, then it might hold out long enough for him to change his mind again.

To be sure, Ukraine cannot fight forever since even Zelensky’s new Chief of Staff Kirill Budanov recently admitted that it faces “a huge, huge problem” after new Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov revealed that over 2 million Ukrainians are dodging the draft, which seriously complicates operations at the front. There’s also always the chance that Putin will turn the special operation into a formal war in which he’d no longer care about civilian casualties in an attempt to decisively end the conflict on Russia’s terms.

There are two competing schools of thought about why he hasn’t yet done so. One speculates that he doesn’t want to inadvertently risk an escalation with the US that could easily spiral into World War III, while the other is that he still truly considers Russians and Ukrainians to be one people like he explained at length in summer 2021’s magnum opus, ergo his reluctance to see their civilians suffer. At any rate, the forever war scenario assumes that Putin won’t do this, which can’t be taken for granted.

Nevertheless, the EU operates under the assumption that he won’t do so, which explains why it plans to move swiftly to approve Ukraine’s €90 billion loan and still buys arms from the US for transfer to that country. This not only perpetuates the risk that tensions spiral out of control but also perpetuates the EU’s energy insecurity amidst the ongoing crisis caused by the Third Gulf War since an end to the conflict could hypothetically result in the resumption of Russian energy exports to the EU to its citizens’ benefit.

The EU’s unstated goal is to perpetuate the conflict till at least 2029 in the hope that the Democrats will regain control of the White House and resume the US’ Biden-era Ukrainian policy. Even though Europeans will economically suffer till then, not to mention more Russians and Ukrainians dying, the bloc is willing to pay these costs in pursuit of its ideologically driven goal of inflicting a strategic defeat upon Russia. Ultimately, however, the conflict might end up strategically defeating the EU instead.

TASS, 4/15/26

MOSCOW, April 15. /TASS/. The pace of Russian macroeconomic indicators is below expectations and forecasts so far, President Vladimir Putin said at the meeting on economic issues.

The unemployment rate remains record low at the same time and totals 2,1%, the head of state noted.

TASS collects the key statements of the head of state.

Condition of the Russian economy

The dynamics of Russian macroeconomic indicators is below expectations and forecasts for the time being. “Below expectations not merely of experts and analysts, but also the forecasts of the government and the Central Bank of Russia,” the president said.

Statistical data for two months shows the decline of economic dynamics. The national GDP lost 1.8% in January – February. “I regret saying that the economic dynamics is going down for two months in a row. The GDP contracted by 1.8% on the whole in January – February.

Balanced budget and support measures

The authorities should keep the course of public finance stability and budget balance, including in the environment of dramatic fluctuations in international markets, and the government prepared appropriate measures.

The financial bloc should focus on preparing specific measures to stimulate economic growth. “I consider necessary to focus continuously in our work on preparations of specific measures for stimulation of growth, on development of appropriate solutions to overcome generally expectable trends that are emerging recently,” the head of state noted.

Proposals should be worked out on extra measures “aimed at resumption of growth of the national economy, support of business initiatives and improvement of the employment structure favoring industries with more efficient jobs, where high added value is generated,” Putin added.

Unemployment rate

The unemployment rate in Russia remains record low and stands at 2.1%. “It evidences in particular that our labor market is changing. Flexible platform-based types of employment are evolving,” the head of state said.

“These and other tasks are recognized in the plan of structural changes in the Russian economy. The government prepared it last year and started its implementation,” Putin added.

***

Russia’s economy up, Ukraine’s down in IMF growth forecast

By Lucy Lery Moffat, Kiev Independent, 4/15/26

WASHINGTON — The International Monetary Fund slashed Ukraine’s growth forecasts but raised Russia’s on April 14, as Kyiv exits a winter of heavy bombing and Moscow rides an unexpected windfall from the war in Iran.

Russia is set to grow 1.1% in 2026, the IMF said in its flagship report on the global economy released on April 14, up from a 0.8% estimate in January.

Ukraine will have to make do with 2% for 2026, says the fund, down from a 4.5% forecast in October — and on the lower end of the fund’s February range of 1.8–2.5%.  

Ukraine is emerging from the toughest winter of the full-scale invasion yet, after Russia launched thousands of drones and missiles at Ukraine’s power and heating infrastructure as temperatures regularly plummeted to minus 20 degrees Celsius.

Moscow wiped out 9 gigawatts of Ukraine’s generation capacity — at times leaving Ukraine with just half of what it needed, causing blackouts and interruptions to heating supplies for millions of people.

Russia, which was staring down the barrel of a budgetary crisis in January, has had a sharp reversal in fortunes since U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran began on Feb. 28. The blockage in the Strait of Hormuz has made Russian barrels more attractive — and expensive.

The fund said that Moscow would carry the momentum of higher energy prices through to 2027, where it is also forecast to grow 1.1% — up 0.1% from the fund’s forecast earlier this year.

Ukraine has stepped up long-range drone attacks on Russia’s oil infrastructure in recent months, in a bid to dampen Russia’s chances to line its war chest.

Roughly 40% of Russia’s oil export capacity was reportedly halted amid Ukrainian drone strikes, pipeline damage, and tanker seizures.

Speaking at a press conference in Washington D.C., Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, chief economist at the IMF, said that the shock today is comparable in size to the oil price shock in 1974, and that under a best-case scenario — a short conflict — energy prices would rise by 19%.

The impact is already feeding through to Ukraine. Ukraine’s top central banker, Andriy Pyshnyy, said that higher oil prices caused by the war in Iran could raise inflation rates by 1.5 to 2.8 percentage points in an interview with Reuters on April 13.

While inflation had been on a downward track from a peak of 15.9% in May last year, prices have risen for two consecutive months — hitting 7.9% in March 2026, according to the National Bank of Ukraine’s latest numbers.

Fuel inflation in Ukraine accelerated sharply to 23.4% year-on-year, the bank also said on April 10.

Kyiv is facing one less risk this week, after incoming Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Magyar said that he would not continue to block a 90 billion euros ($106 billion) loan from the EU to Ukraine.

The cash will cover two-thirds of Ukraine’s military and civilian needs in 2026–2027.

Ukraine heavily relies on funding from foreign partners to keep the state afloat and fund its military, now in its fifth year of fighting Russia’s full-scale invasion.

In the fund’s last big projections in October 2025, it already labeled future prospects as dim due to uncertainty and rising protectionism.

This year’s meetings were again overshadowed, this time by the war in Iran, leading the IMF to cut its global growth forecast to 3.1%, down from 3.3% in January 2026, but also said that growth could fall to 2.5% under an “adverse” scenario or 1.3% under a “severe” scenario.

“With every day that passes and every day that we have more destruction in energy, we are drifting closer towards the adverse scenario,” Gourinchas said.

By Leonid Ragozin, Al Jazeera, 2/11/26

A victim of Russia’s brutal aggression that’s generating a proper humanitarian catastrophe this winter, Ukraine is also stuck between two kinds of Western populism. One is that of Donald Trump and his European far-right equivalents, who don’t care much about either Ukraine or the rules-based order, only their private interests. The other one is that of the anti-Russian (and anti-Trump) hawks who tend to wrap the cynical interests of the military-industrial complex in phoney liberal rhetoric as they pretend to defend the values they don’t truly adhere to — not in Ukraine anyway.

With the Munich Security Conference, Europe’s most important event for foreign policy and military experts, approaching, its longtime chairman, Wolfgang Ischinger, set the agenda regarding the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, which is shifting into its fifth year this month. As long as Ukraine defends Europe, he told the Tagesspiegel, the Russian threat to Europe isn’t huge, but once the war is over, it will increase enormously.

Even as he rushed to deny that he doesn’t want peace to be achieved any time soon, the message was clear: Ukraine is helping European countries to prepare for war with Russia (no matter how implausible this eventuality is looking now, given it presumes Kremlin rulers are essentially suicidal).

At least this is how the Ukrainian ambassador in Berlin, Andrii Melnyk, read Ischinger’s stance. The argument that “Ukraine should bleed out just to buy Europe more time for its own defence” was cynical, he told Ischinger on X. Ukrainians urgently need a ceasefire, insisted the ambassador.

Meanwhile, the idea that peace in Ukraine would be premature remains predominant in a few major European capitals, especially London, as well as inside hawkish American think tanks which have invested their reputation in defeating Russia — a goal that appears to be further away than ever before. Two prominent foreign policy scholars, Michael Kimmage and Hanna Notte, put it far more candidly than Ischinger in a Foreign Affairs piece. “Most important, the US and Europe shouldn’t rush any talks to end the conflict,” they wrote.

This sentiment prevailed at the meeting of the EU Foreign Affairs Council at the end of January, Hungarian foreign minister Peter Szijjarto suggested in an interview. Several European foreign ministers, he claimed, openly stated at the meeting that “the European Union is not prepared for peace”. This echoes Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen’s claim, made a year ago (according to Ukrainian media), that peace in Ukraine was riskier than war.

The rationale behind these arguments is really hard to comprehend. Western powers have been steering Ukraine towards refusing any realistically attainable compromise for many years. The only result this policy has achieved is that realistic conditions for peace have considerably deteriorated compared to what Ukraine would have been getting by default during the talks in Istanbul in 2022 or Minsk in 2015.

The threat of Russia attacking NATO countries is even harder to substantiate in a rational, unemotional conversation. Direct conflict between Russia and the West, which both sides made a point to avoid in the last four years, means nuclear war, which would end human civilisation as we know it. Economically and demographically, Russia is a dwarf compared with the EU alone, not to mention the combined force of the EU, the US and Britain. It can’t win a war against the West without resorting to nuclear weapons.

An all-out conflict with the West is not a part of the mainstream political discourse in Russia or an ideological goal — unlike the USSR, modern Russia has no real ideology. There is no way Russia would attack NATO countries unless it senses a genuinely existential threat — through the blockade of its Baltic ports or Western-assisted missile strikes on Moscow from Ukraine’s territory. It’s indicative enough that for the last four years, Moscow hasn’t been directly responding to what people like former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson openly call the West’s proxy war against Russia.

Wild claims grossly misinterpreting Russia’s motives and intentions are an integral part of jingoistic populism, which has been fuelling this conflict for years. So, it has turned out, was the false promise of defeating the world’s leading nuclear power by a combination of economic and military means.

Speaking at the Munich conference in 2022, days before the start of Russia’s all-out invasion, the same Boris Johnson — then still in office — said that “Russia must fail and be seen to fail”. Just over a month later, Johnson would help derail the peace talks in Istanbul, which could have ended the armed conflict at the outset, according to top Ukrainian negotiator David Arakhamia and a plethora of other sources.

Addressing a huge crowd in Warsaw in March 2022, then-US President Joe Biden effectively pledged to topple Vladimir Putin: “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power”. He also claimed that Western sanctions had “reduced the rouble to rubble” and that the dollar was trading at 200 roubles at the time of speaking. It was a direct lie. The real rate on that day was 95 roubles per dollar. It is less than 80 roubles per dollar today. Last year, the rouble emerged as one of the world’s best-performing currencies, surging by 44 percent against the dollar year on year.

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas kept saying that she believed in Ukraine’s ability to defeat Russia as late as October 2025 — an assessment that completely contradicted the reality on the ground since 2023 when, after the failed Ukrainian counteroffensive, Russia began its slow offensive, which continues today, while Ukraine’s crucial infrastructure is being turned into rubble and the country is rapidly depopulating.

Coming from people who claim to be “liberals”, this unhinged populism creates a paradoxical situation in which certified far-right populists, such as Trump or Hungary’s Orban, as well as the leaders of Germany’s AfD, begin to come across as reasonable and conflict-averse people when it comes to the conflict in Ukraine. They’ve long figured out that they can exploit their opponents’ Russophobia by exposing their incessant lies, exaggerations and unfounded boasts.

The West’s entire policy towards Russia and Ukraine for the last 30 years has been a catastrophic failure, which has created a great boon and an inexhaustible source of political fuel for anti-establishment actors. The never-ending postponement of peace in Ukraine derives from the fact that too many people have been too badly invested in unrealistic outcomes of the war, so they keep buying more and more time to mitigate the impact. But it comes at a huge cost that Ukrainians are paying with their lives and their country’s future.

By Riley Waggaman, Substack, 4/5/26

Over the past several weeks, the Russian government has made a series of decisions so thoroughly perplexing that some Russians now believe they are witnessing a conscious and deliberate effort to detonate their country from within. (Probably your own government is behaving similarly. See? We aren’t so different after all. Why can’t we all just get along?)

Today I would like to share with you a sampling of Russian-language commentaries on this subject.

But first: Some brief background.

The first major event that is causing extreme trepidation within Russian society is the government’s campaign to block Telegram and limit and restrict internet access while forcing everyone to use Russia’s new FSB messenger, MAX. As part of this campaign, the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology, and Mass Media (Roskomnadzor) is also waging all-out war on VPNs, which have basically become mandatory if you want to use the internet in Russia.

Meanwhile, the entire country is experiencing periodic mobile internet outages. In some areas, mobile internet completely stopped working months ago. The government has created a “white list” of “approved” websites and apps that can be accessed during these outages. (They have reportedly even started testing this “white list” on home WiFi networks around Rostov-on-Don). The official explanation for these restrictions is that they are necessary to combat drone attacks. The last few weeks have seen some of the largest and most destructive drone attacks against Russia since the start of the SMO, so the official explanation might not be the most compelling one, as is so often the case.

Roskomnadzor is still a long way off from completely blocking Telegram (it typically works with a VPN), and the attack on “unapproved” web traffic has already resulted in some disastrous friendly fire incidents. For example, the government agency reportedly blocked IP addresses that are used to process bankcard payments, resulting in an hours-long shutdown of digital payment services in Moscow.

Then there is the Siberian Cow Slaughter.

To make a long (and ongoing) story short, authorities are killing the livestock of small farms in several regions of Siberia, purportedly to stop the spread of diseases (without bothering to test any of the animals before killing them). The farmers have been compensated with paltry sums that are only a fraction of the actual market value of their animals. Many are unable to purchase new animals and are now financially ruined.

When farmers began to share videos of their cows being slaughtered for no reason, authorities resorted to traditional terror and intimidation tactics.

When that didn’t work, the regional government claimed videos documenting the insane cow-slaughter were AI-generated fakes.

Meanwhile, the livestock of large and politically well-connected corporate farming operations in the area have remained untouched.

All of the above begs the question: Why is the Russian government doing all of these very destructive and foolish things?

Russian-language news outlets and Telegram channels have been sharing various theories that might help answer this question.

Let’s begin with a commentary published at the end of March by Channel Stalingrad, an excellent independent outlet edited by “like-minded individuals who reject the liberal capitalism imposed on Russia after the collapse of the USSR”:

Telegram is de facto blocked, Putin’s authorities make no secret of their plans to restrict internet access through a system of “whitelisted sites,” and mobile internet has begun to be shut down under the pretext of combating drones. Along with this, a bill has been introduced in the State Duma that would effectively ban criticism and accusations of anyone in the media until a guilty verdict is finalized. It has outraged even those completely loyal to the Kremlin.

This is a blow to everyone, especially those who make money online and on social media by promoting their goods and services. It also simply creates everyday inconvenience for absolutely all Russian citizens. But the Kremlin seems to have lost its mind. The reason is most likely their conviction in the firmness of their power and the silence of the people.

But it is impossible to ignore the fact that the “tsar’s” lawlessness has reached cosmic proportions. What is Vladimir Vladimirovich planning? What is he preparing his “vertical” for? Mobilization? War with NATO? Logically speaking (if the concept of logic applies to the “vertical”), the Ozero cooperative [the group of oligarchs who support Putin] needs a completely controlled information space to nip any “surprises” in the bud. Combined with war fatigue, all this creates, at the very least, a basis for protest. And this isn’t just information noise. […]

But the main thing currently shaking the Tsar’s throne is the lawlessness in Novosibirsk, the [“anti-epidemic” measures] that have deprived a huge number of people of their sources of income without any justification, not even legal ones. The farmers surveyed don’t believe the diagnoses of pasteurellosis and rabies: those who have been raising livestock for a long time would easily recognize the symptoms. […]

In addition to the Novosibirsk region, livestock genocide has also been perpetrated in the Altai and Transbaikal territories, Buryatia, and the Altai Republic. […]

Novosibirsk Region Governor Andrei Travnikov called the mass slaughter of livestock “a strict but necessary veterinary measure.” This is par for the course for Russia’s “leaders.” Putin’s officials are not accustomed to admitting responsibility. We will never hear the truth from them. Because the fairy tales about slaughtering cattle due to pasteurellosis don’t hold up to scrutiny.

Schizophrenia is off the charts. They don’t even remember their own decisions. On October 31, 2022, the Ministry of Agriculture, by its Order No. 770, approved veterinary regulations for the implementation of preventive, diagnostic, therapeutic, restrictive, and other measures, the establishment and lifting of quarantines and other restrictions aimed at preventing the spread and eliminating outbreaks of various types of pasteurellosis. This regulation is completely inconsistent with the lawlessness currently unfolding in the Novosibirsk Region and other regions.

The uproar on Telegam, which will soon be blocked, or has already been blocked, partially helped draw attention to the situation. Still, the only thing this publicity has achieved is control over the procedure itself and at least some regulations for compensation payments. But this is far from certain.

What is happening is complete lawlessness and legal chaos. A logical question: for what purpose? Perhaps some of the Kremlin’s elite are using these informational outlets to fight their competitors. Moreover, they do so without regard for the consequences. As happened, for example, in 2023, when the desire to remove Shoigu from the Russian Ministry of Defense through wholesale criticism of the army command and the promotion of Wagner sparked Prigozhin’s rebellion. Incidentally, criticism of the closure of Telegram is often interpreted as a struggle between the “Kremlin towers.” One of them is lobbying for “de-Telegramization,” while others are trying to stir up a rebellion against it. Consequently, farmers in the Novosibirsk region could very well have fallen victim to the games of Putin’s “vertical,” which is extremely distant from the region, from livestock farming, and from the aspirations of the ordinary people under its control.

If this is indeed the case, Putin has lost control of the state. And this could very well end in disaster. Quite soon.

Our next commentary comes from Yandex’s blogging platform, which is sort of like Russian Substack:

According to the agenda, our country is on the verge of a monumental leap. True, the nature of this leap raises questions among those accustomed to measuring progress in factories built, rockets launched, or technologies implemented. But this is apparently an outdated approach. Modern Russian management has discovered a simpler and more effective path—development by subtraction.

Imagine a gardener who wants to grow a giant pumpkin. A normal gardener fertilizes the soil, waters the beds, and protects the seedlings from frost. Our strategic gardener, however, believes otherwise: the pumpkin will grow to enormous proportions if weeds are prevented from growing, if clouds are prevented from flying past the pumpkin without drenching it with rain, if frosts are prevented from appearing prematurely…

In short, a new word in agricultural technology—you just need to think carefully about what to prohibit, compile an extensive and comprehensive list of prohibitions, and impose it on the pumpkin: grow, you bastard!

In the digital realm, we live in a harsh asceticism. The internet is sometimes shut down, sometimes left in place, but with conditions. VPNs are sometimes banned, sometimes allowed, but by subscription, like premium access to freedom, and for a fee. YouTube, social media, Roblox—everything reminiscent of a global world is being crushed by the digital sovereignty steamroller. The logic is simple: if you remove everything incomprehensible and alien, something native will inevitably flourish. True, so far only the market for workarounds is flourishing, but these are details. […]

It’s as if the government has decided that national development isn’t about creating something new, but about completely erasing the old. If you ban everything bad, it will automatically become good. If you take away people’s internet access, they’ll start watching Skabeeva and Solovyov on TV [government propaganda]. If you ban vaping, everyone will quit smoking. If you increase fines, everyone will become law-abiding.

But history teaches us otherwise: bans don’t create the future. They only preserve the present. You can ban English words, but without modern technology, the language will still deteriorate. You can ban travel, but without knowledge sharing, science will wither. You can force people to have children, but without security for the future, families will not be happy.

The result is a paradox. The list of what’s “not allowed” no longer fits on one page. And the list of what’s “allowed” remains frighteningly short.

The government offers us a fortress-state, safe, quiet, and forbidden. But a fortress is a place for defense, not for living. Life requires roads, not barriers. We need factories, not fines. We need ideas, not bans.

For now, the only sector that’s truly developing and showing steady growth in the country is the industry of restrictions. And if things continue this way, we risk becoming the most developed country in the world in terms of the number of restrictions. But living in this “developed” world will become absolutely impossible.

Finally, I would like to share two texts I came across while browsing Yaplakal, a popular Russian news and discussion forum.

Both texts are essentially conspiracy theories, but they illustrate the rampant disillusionment and distrust in the government that is entirely ignored by Very Important and Serious Russia Experts With Direct and Indirect Ties to the Russian Government.

The first text:

I came to see my dad today and started whining over a glass of tea.

My dad is already at the age where he doesn’t need this internet. But after listening to me for a while, he abruptly said, “Stop. You’re telling me about prohibition and the collapse of the [Soviet] Union. Look at how it happened.”

He loves conspiracy theories.

“To destroy the Union, they started an unpopular war. It lasted a long time. During this time, the budget was depleted and people became disillusioned with the army.”

“Then they started passing weird laws. They tightened the screws for parasitism, any manifestation of dissent, etc. This was to create disillusionment with the government. And finally, they finished it all off with prohibition. They ruined an entire industry where people worked and, most importantly, killed people’s ability to relax normally. People didn’t drink less after that, but they started drinking whatever they could, and on the sly. They started giving prison sentences for selling alcohol. People started going blind from counterfeit alcohol. Well, it’s just like in your VPN, where people are willing to trust who knows who just to get around the restrictions.”

“And then, when distrust of the government reached its peak, when neither the people nor the army wanted such a government anymore, and anyone but them would rather have it, a coup happened. And mind you, it was almost bloodless. How much do they have to annoy everyone so that no one will stand up for the country?”

“And most importantly, all this was always done with the message that everything was being done for the people and the country. Mind you, it’s still the same. All to protect people from the corrupting influence of Western vodka. You’ll see, they already did it once, now they’re just repeating it.”

Of course, I laughed. Well, yes, there are a lot of coincidences. The long-standing scam, the empty budget, the idiotic laws and restrictions, the people’s disillusionment. There are a lot of coincidences, of course, but it’s just a coincidence.

Or is it? ((

The second text:

Conspiracy Theory:

Observing Roskomnadzor’s persistence in blocking Telegram and tightening control over messaging apps, I come to the conclusion that we’re misinterpreting what’s happening. The average person sees this as a fight against the opposition or spies. The opposition interprets it as a pre-election crackdown.

But what if this is part of a larger plan? A global rebranding of power, initiated by those who will soon leave the political arena.

Let’s consider the mechanism of a low barrier to entry for the future government. The scheme, although cynical, is quite effective.

Stage: Creating Problems. The current elite passes extremely unpopular laws.

We see this now—laws on blocking, mandatory biometrics, VPN bans, three-year data retention.

The old regime acts as an authoritarian controller, depriving citizens of their familiar tools.

The result is mass discontent. People previously apolitical begin to perceive the state as a source of problems. A grandmother, deprived of contact with her grandson, experiences negativity. Businesses losing customers due to restrictions are ready to support any changes.

The old regime, consciously or not, is generating hundreds of thousands of “silent protesters.”

Formation of a critical mass of irritation: When instant messaging apps are finally blocked, society will be divided into: 15% of tech-savvy users capable of bypassing the blockages (for them, the situation is not critical); 85% of the population, who will find themselves cut off from their usual communication channels.

For these 85%, any future government that declares, “We’re canceling this absurdity. Here’s the ‘Enable Telegram’ button,” will automatically become a savior. A low barrier to entry is achieved not by building something new, but by eliminating the negative consequences of previous policies.

An analogy with the 1990s: Gorbachev’s “dry law” generated hatred. Yeltsin, by figuratively legalizing alcohol, gained the people’s love. It doesn’t matter that this had its downsides. Allowing the banned became the key to high ratings.

The Savior stage: The arrival of a new government with a simple solution. Imagine: the year is 2026. Telegram is down, WhatsApp is unavailable. Communication has returned to 2005 levels. Discontent is skyrocketing. And then a “Technocrat” appears (his origin is irrelevant). His program consists of two points:

• Repeal all laws blocking instant messaging apps within 24 hours.
• Pay bonuses to telecom operators for restoring traffic.

What’s going on? The entire country, which until recently hated the “regime,” greets him with applause. The threshold for entering power is minimal. He doesn’t need to understand complex issues. He simply lifted the ban.

This is precisely the technology of power change with a low threshold for legitimization. The old regime has so exhausted the people with senseless restrictions that anyone who lifts them will be perceived as a benefactor.

What are the motives of the old regime? Why are they playing the role of the “bad guy”? The most pressing question. Don’t they understand that they are working for the successor? They do. But they have limited choices:

• Either they tighten control, losing ratings but buying time.
• Or they don’t tighten it, and they will be swept away in the near future, since instant messengers are used to coordinate protests.

They choose the lesser evil. And at the same time, they create the perfect “safety cushion” for their successor. The successor has probably already been chosen. He is waiting. He already has a decree ready on the “abolition of digital oppression.”

We’re outraged by the bans imposed by Roskomnadzor and the parliamentarians. But perhaps they’re simply fulfilling their role, laying the groundwork for the next political cycle.

The new government in Russia will get an easy start not because of its own merits, but because of the actions of the previous one. All it will take is a promise to “restore everything as it was,” and the people will give it their full support.

So, this opinion has taken hold, should I go to the nuthouse, or is there some truth to it?

Maybe?