俄乌战争持续，普京面临精英与民众质疑

Putin under pressure. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s long-held iron grip on power is being challenged by the war in Ukraine and his government’s authoritarian crackdowns. He finds himself in unfamiliar political territory, publicly questioned by some of the country’s elite and embarrassed by Ukraine’s successful strikes deep into Russian cities. Why is this happening now, more than four years into Putin’s war? And does this mean that Putin is vulnerable?

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Thank you. Once again, moderator Nick Schifrin. Hello, and welcome to "Compass Points" from London. Since 2000, Russian President Vladimir Putin has ruled Russia with the classic chapters out of the authoritarian handbook, creating an external enemy, offering prosperity in exchange for political apathy, crushing criticism, and distributing patronage among the elites. But, today, with the economy strained, wildly unpopular restrictions on the Internet, and Ukrainian attacks challenging Russian cities and energy exports, we’re beginning to see some cracks in the Kremlin’s support.

To talk about the state of Russian politics and criticism of the man who, for 25 years, has been at their center, I came here to talk to Arkady Ostrovsky, the Russia editor of The Economist. Arkady Ostrovsky, thanks very much. - Appreciate it. Ostrovsky: Thank you. I want to start with increased public doubts of Vladimir Putin’s stewardship of the Russian Federation. There’s been prominent questioning of the war in Ukraine.

We see social media videos of ordinary Russians voicing some criticism. And, as you recently highlighted, even a beauty influencer posted a video with a series of grievances that, as you pointed out, captured the disaffection of the loyalist majority. What’s going on, do you think, and how significant is it? I think it is significant. I think there is a change of mood. I think it’s to do with several things. And I think the most important is the lack of any obvious gains or progress in the war, or benefits of it, while the costs are mounting up.

The economic costs, and they come in various forms. There is a budget deficit. There is increase in taxes. There is infringement on people’s daily lives in a way that the war hadn’t done before, because mobilization affected a part of the population. It didn’t last that long. And the contract army, that’s very interesting, because people see, "OK, well, here is the deal. These people take money." The fact that some of them are cursed or lured, it’s kind of people try to disengage from that.

That’s why Russia could absorb this enormous losses of over a million people in the dead and wounded. And that’s why it hasn’t produced the effect that it produced in the wars of Vietnam or the Soviet war in Afghanistan, which was much smaller. So the gains and the benefits are not there at all. The fatigue and frustration are very palpable. People are completely exhausted by it, because while the state has pretended "this is a special military operation, "your lives are not getting affected."

In fact, they are getting affected. But people have been living under strain in a kind of almost a state of emergency of this kind of shrill propaganda. Airports regularly get shut down and the outages of the Internet. I think that was actually the last kind of important bit we can talk about. So what’s really interesting about this moment is that this is not a dissatisfaction amongst the anti-war minority, which has always been there consistently at 15, 20% of the population, even in this incredibly repressive regime, are telling pollsters, "We don’t like it, we’re against war."

There is also very evident dissatisfaction of the pro-war kind of zealots, the military bloggers. Who say it’s not enough. Ostrovsky: Saying it’s not enough. "Russia hasn’t been properly mobilized. "The economy hasn’t been put on the war footing. "The elite keeps stealing. "We’re not progressing." What’s interesting, actually, some of the criticism you hear on two sides of the spectrum are starting to merge. But the really important stuff is happening in the middle, in those 60, 70% of what I would call kind of the loyalists or conformist people.

These are the people who say, "Yeah, we support the war." What they mean is, "Leave us out of it." This is where the dissatisfaction is becoming very prominent. And a lot of it’s to do with the Internet, because that affects everybody. It’s an infringement on everyday life. Well, now that you’ve said that twice, explain that. Why did Internet restrictions that came out of the FSB change the mood? Why did it affect so many people?

And why have people been so angry about it? Because in big cities, it’s a huge part of everyday life, because it’s messaging your children at school. It’s paying for your parking. It’s paying for services. It’s ordering food. It affects everything. It’s not political. It’s existential in a way. And what’s interesting is not just what the blogger said. I mean, the really interesting thing is the reaction to it, because the reaction to it was within the first few hours, current brand from the top of my head, but over a million views.

And then within the first 4 or 5 days, 30 million views, nearly 100,000 of comments, "Thank you for saying it." Now, this is the blog. She’s not an activist. She’s not a politician. She’s not a journalist. Schifrin: She’s not in Russia. Ostrovsky: She’s not in Russia, although her views are. She’s in the south of France. She promotes her brand of cosmetics and her lifestyle. What she is, actually, she shows kind of the normal country.

Yeah, they’re not perfect. Some of them are cynical, quite kind of normal, ordinary people, the same people who, you know, in the West with the same spending habits. Schifrin: Right. It’s their dissatisfaction that matters. Let me bring up the elites as well, though, because you had, in The Economist, a former senior Russian official write this, that senior officials, governors across the country, businessmen have recently stopped using the first person when talking about the country’s actions.

Quote... [Reading] Why is that significant? Nobody wanted this war in the elites. Nobody expected this war in the elites. But when it started, OK, here we are. Now we’re just all in it. The elites are starting to question. A, they never said it. They never embraced this war fully. But they’re starting to question whether Putin has any plan. They’re starting to question why there are no gains. But most importantly, they’re starting to question whether he’s got any vision for the future.

Because if there is one thing, if there’s one word I’ve been picking up on wherever I talk to, the elites, the ordinary people, regional elites, businessmen, it’s this word dead end. We’re at a dead end. And this is why people like this, who wouldn’t have spoken to us, wouldn’t have written for us two years ago, are starting to speak. The fact that they’re starting to speak is a sign of frustration. The fact that there is a dead end is a very serious problem, because it doesn’t mean it’s just static.

Because for the Russian army and for the Russian political system, dead end or stagnation is really dangerous. It’s not that you can just carry on like this, because there is a realization that the longer you carry on, particularly now, the more you lose. Russia is being attired. Putin moved into this phase of the attritional war, hoping to break Ukraine. The attrition actually is turn

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