Russia Influencers In OPEN REVOLT Against Putin!

Ajouté : 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]We can laugh at Russian influencers and TV personalities all we want, but the truth is that those guys are invaluable to laundering what the Kremlin is doing to the Russian people, the Russian public and their disastrous war in Ukraine. But the Russian influencer space is in essentially a civil war now over the criticisms of Vladimir Putin.

[00:00:27]And it's not just mill bloggers. It's literally the whole internet in Russia is a is roing in this crazy conflict.

[00:00:36]Let's take a look. Okay, so a Russian blogger right and in influencer really uh gave an 18minute video in which she absolutely evviscerated Vladimir Putin.

[00:00:51]Now she rolled out a time-tested technique to do so. uh going by the name Bana who lives outside of Russia obviously because if you made these criticisms inside Russia you would go to jail. Uh absolutely just eviscerated the uh Putin government. Right. She says in one instance uh of the video she claimed that people are afraid of you being Vladimir Putin. bloggers are afraid of you addressing Vladimir Putin. She says, "Artists are afraid of you. Governors are afraid of you and you are the president of our country." She made a direct appeal to Putin with a wide range of problems inside Russia. Now, she alluded to domestic issues, uh, floods in Dagasan, uh, a livestock coal resulting in massive price spikes, uh, and intense restrictions on online social networks.

[00:01:51]She said, "This is preventing people from communicating with loved ones." She said, quote, "There's a feeling we're no longer in a free country." Oh, lady.

[00:01:59]Now, the post itself had 26 million views on Instagram and 75,000 comments, almost all of which were in Russian. and she a different lifestyle blogger went said that the Russian government's decision to block Telegram would be a huge hit to the Russian economy and adding other grievances like high taxes and inequality quote how much money do you need to steal so that it's enough she said citing quote the average member of parliament who owns properties worth billions millions of dollars and hold multiple foreign passports right she later deleted the video but these kind of of barges being fired by uninvolved influencers in the Russian space is pretty unprecedented. Now, we've talked for years how the Russian military bloggers, right, the Russian equivalent to people like me, former military with a real eye and ear for the language and a willingness to get into the ground truth of things. Those guys have been critical of the war and the war effort for a long time. And they've been a thorn in Russia's side. And not because they believe that it's wrong to invade Ukraine, but because that the Russian army, they feel, is being run with an unacceptable level of corruption and mismanagement.

[00:03:18]But Russia has kind of kept them under wraps as a niche subset of influencers who the government kind of needs to launder their war reputation. But the fact that we're seeing now regular Russians who are apolitical, we're talking again about lifestyle vloggers, makeup bloggers who are out here putting these statements saying, "Listen, essentially Vladimir Putin, your advisers aren't telling you what's really happening in this country." They say, "The jobs are vanishing. The wealth inequality is spiraling. The corruption of the government is staggering."

[00:03:58]and she is it was taken as a sign that this was a that there is a real problem inside of Russia. Now, interestingly enough, we've heard that Vladimir Putin himself has started to publicly acknowledge that there are problems with the Russian economy, right? He's gone on TV and asked why the economy is do performing so poorly and an unusual acknowledgement that this is a real problem. But what's interesting is that Putin's propagandist, TV personality Vladimir Solovv, uh has absolutely went out and fired his own shots against this woman, right? And she I mean the criticism, right? He called her an enemy of the people who should be taken off air. Uh he also insulted her uh who she's very publicly a single mother uh and just really claimed that she was uh and asked why she hadn't been designated a foreign agent, a label with negative Soviet era spying connotations.

[00:05:12]Uh he added, quote, "It's not up to this worn out harlot to open her dirty mouth and clog up the information space."

[00:05:18]That's a direct quote from Solivv. Uh, and the fact is this is a huge problem for Vladimir Putin. Right here, here's another Let's see if I can find another uh Russian lifestyle vlogger, uh, who said, "Lisa Molka, a lifestyle and parenting writer and blogger in Russia, uh, posting to her nearly 1 million Instagram followers. She says, "I can't go on like this. I can't stand what they are doing to us, these tyrants, divorced from reality." She said that she lives in the remote countryside and the only way for her to work or for her children to get an education is online. Quote, "When I tell my children who I raised to be patriotic, kids, you have to turn on a special VPN to get around what those who were supposed to look after you have thought up so you can go to freaking school. It's nonsense." She said the video garnered 2 million views. She added, quote, I hope Oh, no, sorry. A different vlogger, 19-year-old Artm uh said, quote, I hope I don't get put in jail for this video. Video got 600,000 views. He said he wasn't shocked at the fact that Russia had not just blocked social networks, but was now banning the use of English words in advertising. He said, quote, "Where is freedom? I don't understand people who still call themselves free. There are fewer and fewer opportunities." And this is a huge problem for Vladimir Putin because one of the core tenants of this war is that he's worked really hard to not really let the public get to make an informed referendum on the war. It's meant to be a background event that doesn't affect the Russian public's day-to-day lives. Right? The And look at all the steps he's done. Instead of a mobilization that would draw every single able-bodied military-aged male, whether you are from a wealthy uh family in St. Petersburg or a rural ethnic village in Siberia, right? Instead, he's relied on a contracting system that has drawn primarily from impoverished ethnic minorities, linguistic minorities, people who importantly don't have a connection to metropolitan European Russia, i.e. Moscow, St. Petersburg, and surrounding regions where most of the Russian economy uh is located. And Putin has also worked tirelessly to ensure that there are still consumer goods that Russians can access and purchase, cutting deals with China to make sure that Chinese manufactured goods can get into Russia and keep prices low. He's worked hard to keep private sector businesses basically paid up with subsidies even at the expense of the Russian government's balance sheet. And of course, he has made sure to contain the actual military operations as much as possible, keeping them into Ukraine, avoiding and working tirelessly to stop Ukrainian drone attacks from impacting Moscow or St. Petersburg. And all of this has had the effect of making sure the Russian public, they may not like the war, but they don't really have to worry about it because it doesn't impact their lives dayto-day, right? The impacts are rural villages far away. uh people in Siberia, the poor uh Ukrainians, other people's problems, right?

[00:08:22]But the issue is that now we're seeing in order to stop uh the spread of anti-war anti-war information, uh they've had to remove basically all social media platforms and anything that grants Russians anonymity or access to real information.

[00:08:38]All of these efforts have resulted in a massive backlash again by these influencers, but the influencers are both encouraging the Russian public by normalizing these sentiments spoken aloud, but also they're a reflection of the Russian public. Now, obviously, influencers have a special uh uh sore spot for government decisions to ban platforms. Again, I would be pretty livid if the government was to wake up one day and block YouTube or and certainly that's part of what's driving these influencers. But again, I really think that they are reflecting a real belief. Again, you don't get to be a major influencer without being able to tell what sort of sentiments and stories people are going to at least be interested in. Now, the Kremlin also has its own counterprogram. And before we talk more about that, I want to mention, of course, guys, that the reason I can cover so many independent stories, including those that are unfavorable to our government here in the United States, is because you guys have my back at combat vetnews.com. This is my version of Patreon. This is where you guys can directly keep me and the team able to do this every single day, so definitely pick up a membership at the specialist, lieutenant, or colonel tier.

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[00:10:09]Now, I thought this was also very interesting because the Russians are trying to simply say, "Listen, if we can't get the influencers on our on our side, we're going to make our own influencers, and we're going to find the most manip easily manipulated people, teenagers."

[00:10:23]The Russia is training an army, a literal army of teenage influencers to turn out pro-war content. At a content camp in April, 120 teens in uniform learned from soldiers and state media how to make videos, use AI, and grow audiences. Russia is trying to literally produce their own pro-war influencers through content creation camps, training these teenagers to parrot the Kremlin's hardline anti-West narrative onto the next generation. And this is truly insane. And it's a level of propaganda that has gone into the schools um where Russia increasingly manipulates its curriculum to justify its invasion. Uh they actually send returned soldiers to whip up pro-war pro-war enthusiasm in the classroom. And according to one former soldier and chief of the general staff of Russia's young army cadets movement, he said, quote, "We've created a huge team of kids who understand how to broadcast government values and our organization's values." And I promotional video that children were cheering to see Golovkin see who could reload the sniper rifle the fastest.

[00:11:25]Okay, lads. Now again, another movement offers rewards to teenagers with the best blogs and biggest followings.

[00:11:34]They also, of course, according to a UK-based conflict studies research center, he said, uh, these 14 to 16 year olds have grown up in an environment where they have never known anything other than Putinism. This is their reality. So, we shouldn't be surprised if there are new efforts to spread information, disinformation or information reflect that reality. Uh, again, he quote, Putin has directly quoted Ottovon Bismar saying, quote, wars are not won by generals, but by school teachers and parish priests. said, "Educating young people in the spirit of patriotism is crucial." And again, this is just a sign more of desperation than anything else. Uh, and again, the reality of Russia, of the Russian economy for the average Russian, is just getting worse and worse and worse, right? Russia has had to cut support for civilian businesses. Uh, a lot of businesses really depend on these government subsidies. Uh and you're also seeing again despite a rise in what they call an involuntary part-time and idle workforce. Uh this is a pandemic level of unemployment. Right? Number of Russian workers on reduced hours or temporary downtime was the highest level since 2020. About 1.6 million employees were placed on part-time schedules involuntarily and the highest since third quarter 2020. uh an increase of nearly 15%. In a country with 90 million people, 1.6 of them uh forcibly out of the workforce is a massive problem, particularly when you add in the fact that another 1 million plus um are likely wounded or currently fighting in the conflict. Right? So again, this is not this does not spell the end of the Putin regime. Uh this does not spell the complete, you know, you're not going to see a color revolution in Russia, but what this does show is that there are more and more cracks appearing in the Russian public.

[00:13:32]And what that does is create an incentive, not for Putin to get out of the war. That's not going to happen. But what you could see is the incentive for someone in the Kremlin, a Kremlin insider with control probably of the security services and uh enough disaffected co-conspirators get together and say, "Listen, Vladimir, he is 70 years old. He is an old man. He has lost touch with reality and it is time to have the dictator's 25th amendment which is a coup and a show trial and an ignoble retirement. We'll put it like that. We can only hope. Anyway, thanks to Brendan GS, Alfred, Peter, Gerard, Allan, William, Tom, Thomas, Deborah, Jeff, and Christine, as well as all you lieutenant here folks. Couldn't do it without you. See you in the next one. Cheers.