MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin and his security services kept public dissent in check even as he invaded a neighboring country, sent hundreds of thousands of soldiers to their deaths and drastically raised taxes to pay for it all.
Then, they began to restrict popular applications and intermittently cut off internet access. Suddenly many Russians were outraged.
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Ordinary citizens, politicians and even reality TV stars have criticized the restrictions. By speaking out, they breathed life into the Russian political system, which no longer allows genuine opposition, but still leaves some space on the margins for differing opinions.
Instagram influencers who are normally apolitical have become vehemently advocating for digital rights. Politicians from the “systemic opposition” — front factions that the Kremlin allows in Parliament to oppose the ruling United Russia party, but which almost always vote with it — criticized the government for restricting Telegram, the country’s most used messaging app.
Discontent has been growing in the months ahead of Russia’s first parliamentary elections since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. And, along with dissatisfaction with the weakening economy and tax hikes, it has helped drive down Putin’s approval rating. The index has fallen for seven consecutive weeks and is now at 65.6%, according to VTsIOM, a state research institute, a level similar to just before the war.
“Internet restrictions have turned a large number of people against the ruling class, although not necessarily against Vladimir Putin personally,” said Mikhail Komin, a political scientist at the Center for European Policy Analysis. “That’s why we’re seeing approval ratings drop and people who have never spoken out about politics suddenly become politicized.”
Few aspects of Russia’s deepening repression over the course of the war have been felt as widely as the Kremlin’s efforts, under wartime pretexts, to bring the country’s internet fully under its control.
Citing security reasons, authorities blocked mobile internet access for days at a time in the vast majority of Russian regions for months.
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They also blocked or slowed down a growing number of foreign apps — including Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp and Telegram — pressuring Russians to use domestic alternatives that are easier to monitor.
Many have turned to technological solutions known as virtual private networks, or VPNs.
As blackouts and lockdowns began to interfere with daily life, Russians attempted to hold protests in some cities. Authorities prevented them, in some cases citing fears that the demonstrations could grow too large.
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Instead, Russians took their complaints to social media. Angry messages flooded the comments section of the Ministry of Digital Development’s page. When internet outages peaked, so did Google searches for “how to leave Russia”.
Criticism came from unexpected voices. Victoria Bonya, a beauty influencer and former reality TV star who lives in Monaco, said in an Instagram video that internet restrictions “make Russia [um lugar] impossible to live.”
She was careful to criticize Putin directly, using a Russian cliché to suggest that perhaps he had not been properly briefed by his aides. And he spoke about the relative security of living abroad. Still, he said: “I don’t think people should be afraid of the president himself.”
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The video received more than 30 million views. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was pressured by reporters for two days in a row to comment on the case and finally said Bonya could rest assured that the Kremlin was working on the issues she raised.
Gennady Zyuganov, leader of the Russian Communist Party, praised Bonya during a speech in Parliament. He said that with the economy stagnating and restrictions on the internet increasing, growing discontent could threaten the current government in the same way that an unpopular war, economic hardship and the suppression of freedoms toppled the Russian monarchy in 1917.
Bonya gave voice to long-suppressed frustrations of many Russians, said Abbas Gallyamov, a former Kremlin speechwriter who left Russia after the invasion of Ukraine.
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“The attack on the internet is seen as an attack on private life,” he said by phone. “People are losing basic services. This generates very strong resentment.”
Even loyal members of Putin’s own party, United Russia, spoke out.
Vyacheslav Gladkov, governor of the Belgorod region in western Russia — the target of almost daily attacks by the Ukrainian army — said on social media that he was “concerned” that restrictions on Telegram could put the lives of residents who rely on the app for air raid alerts at risk.
More than 100 million Russians used Telegram every month for communication, news and business transactions. The Kremlin is pushing for them to migrate to MAX, an unencrypted “super app” developed by the government.
Russians are calling on opposition parties to try to do something. The Communist Party was “inundated with complaints from all over the country,” Alexander Yushchenko, a veteran party deputy, said by phone. Voter reactions to the restrictions, he said, ranged from “consternation to open radicalism.”
What irritates people most, according to him, is the secrecy surrounding the measures. The government has only spoken vaguely about security threats to justify internet restrictions.
This month, communists tabled a motion to force the Ministry of Digital Development to provide an official explanation of the blackouts and blockages. The proposal failed because United Russia members voted against it.
In a curious development, ongoing criticism of internet shutdowns has benefited a shell party created ahead of the 2021 parliamentary elections to capture the youth vote following the Kremlin’s crackdown on the genuine opposition movement led by Alexei Navalny.
Previously, the New People party sought to position itself on less sensitive issues, such as reducing bureaucracy for small businesses. Now, he focuses on internet freedoms, being careful not to attribute blame directly to Putin.
New People, which won 5% of the vote in 2021, has now outperformed the other three Kremlin-aligned opposition parties, receiving the support of 13% of voters in a recent poll.
Although largely silenced since 2022, opposition parties maintain a degree of independence and have been testing the limits of dissent ahead of parliamentary elections scheduled to take place by September. (New York Times representatives declined multiple interview requests from The New York Times.)
The newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta, which is sometimes mildly critical of the Russian government, wrote in an editorial that “the internet is essentially the only issue where all parties can increase their approval at the moment.”
Still, these flashes of political activity will not reverse Russians’ disillusionment with what is widely seen as a rigged system.
“I don’t participate in this theater,” said Svetlana, a retired engineer in her 50s, as she recounted her past experience on a local election organization committee.
Svetlana, who was afraid to give her surname, was in Red Square to pay tribute to Vladimir Lenin at his mausoleum during an event organized by the Communist Party.
“With the current government, we are basically confined to an open-air prison, and things are only getting worse,” he said.
Denis Parfyonov, a Communist Party deputy who attended the event, said public discontent had grown so much that “it may not be long” before the Russians are ready for “much more decisive measures.”
So far, however, the system of power built by Putin appears protected against the kind of revolutionary change that Russian communists, in theory, celebrate.
“We can see a new political process underway, that’s for sure, but it does not pose a threat to the stability of the political regime,” said Komin.
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