One of Ernest Hemingway's characters says that bankruptcy happens "gradually, then suddenly." Since the start of the year, signs of governmental deterioration in Russia have been intensifying, and at the beginning of this month the regime appeared closer to a breaking point than at any time since its invasion of Ukraine.
The traditional parade in Moscow marking the Soviet Union's Victory Day over Nazi Germany is supposed to take place this weekend, but this year it will be held in a reduced format: only cadets will take part, with no mechanized or armored vehicles and no missiles, and aircraft are scheduled to fly overhead at the end.
The Russian Defense Ministry tersely explained that the reason was "the current operational situation," and no one needed any further details: When Russian fighters on the front are charging into battle on bicycles and horses, displaying polished tanks in Red Square would be a provocation.
And if that were not enough, there are fewer and fewer places in Russia that Kyiv's drones cannot reach. "Maybe they can take part in the parade," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy mocked the Kremlin on Monday, and no one in Moscow now doubts the credibility of the threat.
But the problem is far bigger than the drone threat alone. At the end of the first third of the year, Russia's problems look increasingly like a snowball, and even Vladimir Putin, once known for his confident gunslinger's gait, now looks like a lame duck.
Kyiv's drones control Russia's skies
"In Russia, it is as though the composition of the air has changed, or, if one looks from the outside, one feels the fog," writer and journalist Alexander Baunov vividly described the state of the nation a few days ago. "We are watching three overlapping processes: Attitudes toward Putin are changing; economic optimism is disappearing, along with the everyday patriotism that is satisfied with mere survival; and the understanding is seeping in that the war has changed and has minimized Russia's advantages."
Indeed, the troubles are coming in every dimension and from every direction. From the outside, Ukraine has made a leap forward in every military aspect over the past six to eight months. All along the front, air defense systems are being systematically destroyed, opening corridors into the depths of Russia for Kyiv's drones.
Oil terminals and, above all, oil depots are burning from Tuapse and Novorossiysk on the Black Sea coast to Perm in the Ural Mountains and on to Ust-Luga and Primorsk near St. Petersburg. In the past five months, Russia has managed to recruit around 148,400 fighters, but has lost 156,735, and that is only from drone strikes, meaning with verified documentation.
In this situation, Russia cannot manage rotations between units or within them, let alone build up forces for offensives, while the Ukrainians appear to have solved the problem of their inherent demographic disadvantage and chronic manpower shortage through an unprecedented integration of robotic systems.
Just two weeks ago, the military correspondent for Komsomolskaya Pravda, Putin's favorite newspaper, complained: "We bring in a truck with a thousand soldiers, and the Ukrainians bring in a truck with a thousand ground vehicles." In the face of this turn, pro-war Russian bloggers have stopped proposing a full mobilization: More manpower at the front would mean only turning it into cannon fodder. On the contrary, last month, for the first time since the Ukrainian operation in Russia's Kursk region, Moscow lost more territory in Ukraine than it gained.
But these are only the external troubles. In recent months, the war has begun to preoccupy more and more Russian citizens, including the "apolitical" ones and even supporters of the regime.
This did not happen because of inflation or macroeconomic problems, but because the state, which has begun losing control, intruded into the last remaining comfort zone: internet use. First came the effort to force a move to the MAX messaging app, which is completely transparent to the security services, and to abandon Telegram. Then came mobile internet shutdowns, with the claim that they were needed to prevent attacks by Ukrainian drones.
That was already far too much even for regime supporters, or at least for figures such as Victoria Bonya, a television presenter and model who lives a life of luxury in Monaco but recorded a video appeal to Putin in which she more or less accused him of being disconnected from reality and unaware of what is happening in the country. The 18-minute video garnered more than 10 million views within an hour, forced the Kremlin to respond, and prompted the Kremlin's No. 1 propagandist to invite her for a conversation.
Bonya, who became a vox populi, was not alone. Military bloggers have reached unprecedented levels of criticism of the army's dysfunction, and one of them, with 250,000 followers, published a statement calling on Putin to "stop lying." Ilya Remeslo, a propagandist and provocateur who worked for the Presidential Administration, dared to lash out at Putin and his family and list all his weaknesses. He was later placed in a psychiatric institution, but surprisingly was released.
Videos are coming in from all over Russia of ordinary men and women who are no longer afraid to attack Putin directly for abandoning their defense in favor of imperial delusions. "Mr. Putin, where are our shelters? Why haven't you taken care of us until now? You sit in a basement yourself," a woman from Chelyabinsk is heard telling the leader. The classic Russian formula, according to which only the nobles or officials are villains while the tsar is blameless, has been broken, or at least has begun cracking rapidly.
Embarrassment even in the polls
Even official polls show that the Russian public is beginning to tire of him. For seven weeks, the state-run VCIOM polling institute has identified a decline in support for Putin. Some 24.1% of Russians no longer trust him, and 23.3% are dissatisfied with his performance. These are very high numbers for a regime such as Russia's, and in practice they are probably even higher.
And if that were not enough, Putin himself also appears to be losing his grip. His speech has become more unstable, he has difficulty delivering sharp messages and drifts into detached chatter. The apparatus around him has also become sloppy and is not taking care to clean up his mistakes. Ahead of International Women's Day, for example, Putin's greeting was distributed unedited, and the leader once filmed riding horses bare-chested was exposed to everyone as he coughed and failed to steady his voice.
In this situation, perhaps there should be no surprise at the intelligence report revealed Tuesday by the independent Russian investigative outlet iStories, and leaked at the same time to the Financial Times and CNN. According to the report, which originated in one of the European Union countries, Putin fears a coup, and the security measures around him have been significantly tightened.
The authors claim that the Russian president "especially fears an assassination using drones," not by the Ukrainians but by "representatives of the Russian elite." Former Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, once one of his closest friends, is mentioned as someone who could be part of such a conspiracy because of the many arrests at the Defense Ministry on corruption charges.
Following fears of an assassination or coup, the Federal Protective Service has raised security levels even further. Cameras have been installed in the homes of Kremlin employees, including cooks, bodyguards and photographers who work with Putin. They have been barred from using public transportation. Employees from the closest circle may use only mobile phones without internet access, and those arriving for meetings with the president must now undergo additional checks.
At the same time, the number of places Putin visits has been dramatically reduced, and since the beginning of the year he has not visited any military event or facility. The president and his family no longer go to his residence in Novo-Ogaryovo near Moscow and have abandoned Valdai, where there is a vast private residential compound.
"Researchers who describe the end of political eras identify that smell, difficult to convey in words, of decline, when the old regime has not yet departed but is no longer taken for granted. People no longer seek to lean on it as a source of strength," Baunov noted in his article. "A turn in social moods begins, opening up toward possibilities that are surprising, alluring and terrifying at once. In Russia, extensive literature was devoted to this feeling at the beginning of the previous century. Another body of literature may yet be devoted to it in the present one."
