For more than two decades, Vladimir Putin cultivated an image of ruthless competence: the cold tactician who restored order after the humiliations of the 1990s, revived Russian power and made the state feared once again.
Yet from within Russia itself — among disillusioned elites, nationalist commentators, weary businessmen and expatriates who once defended him — a harsher verdict is increasingly emerging. The criticism is no longer confined to liberal dissidents in exile. It is seeping into the language of the patriotic establishment that Mr Putin spent years constructing.
The problem for the Kremlin is not merely military exhaustion in Ukraine. It is the growing sense that the Russian president has become detached from the realities of the country he rules. The Kremlin still presents him as the indispensable statesman bestriding history. But beneath the carefully choreographed appearances lies an ageing ruler presiding over stagnation, censorship and a narrowing circle of loyalists whose principal skill is telling him what he wishes to hear.
Recent reporting has pointed to an unmistakable deterioration in public mood. Russian citizens complain not only of inflation and rising taxes, but also of internet blackouts, travel restrictions and an atmosphere of suffocating political repression. Even among previously loyal constituencies, frustration is beginning to surface over the endless demands of a war that was once promised as swift and decisive.
That criticism has become visible in formerly pro-Kremlin circles is particularly striking. Earlier this year, the nationalist lawyer and propagandist Ilya Remeslo publicly renounced his support for Mr Putin, accusing the Kremlin of corruption and strategic incompetence. For a figure long associated with attacks on opposition activists, the denunciation was remarkable not because it represented mass dissent, but because it exposed fractures inside the ideological machinery of Putinism itself.
The Russian nationalist right — once one of Mr Putin’s most dependable constituencies — has become increasingly volatile. Some accuse the Kremlin of fighting the war in Ukraine with half-measures and bureaucratic paralysis. Others complain that the state has become obsessed with propaganda while neglecting military realities. The criticism is often brutal precisely because it comes from people who once embraced the Kremlin’s imperial rhetoric.
Among Russian expatriates, meanwhile, the tone has shifted from fear to contempt. Many who fled after the invasion of Ukraine describe a leadership consumed by paranoia and incapable of modernisation. Former soldiers such as Pavel Filatyev, now living abroad, have portrayed the Russian military machine as corrupt, poorly supplied and cynically indifferent to the lives of ordinary soldiers.
The tragedy for Russia is that the system Mr Putin created now appears incapable of self-correction. Independent media has been systematically dismantled, criticism criminalised and political opposition either imprisoned, exiled or dead. The result is not stability but intellectual decay. Officials compete to exaggerate successes while concealing failures. Military commanders issue optimistic assessments detached from battlefield realities. Regional governors perform loyalty rather than governance.
This atmosphere of denial has become increasingly costly. Ukrainian drone strikes deep inside Russian territory have punctured the Kremlin’s narrative of invulnerability. Regions once regarded as insulated from conflict are now experiencing disruption and insecurity. Even pro-war commentators have begun questioning how a supposedly revitalised superpower could remain vulnerable to repeated attacks hundreds of miles from the front line.
Economic dependence on China has further undermined the Kremlin’s projection of sovereign strength. Moscow now approaches Beijing less as a partner than as a supplicant. Chinese leverage over energy pricing, technology and trade has exposed the asymmetry in a relationship once marketed domestically as an alliance of equals. Within sections of the Russian elite, resentment is quietly growing over the country’s transformation into the junior partner in its most important geopolitical relationship.
Yet perhaps the most damaging criticism concerns not competence but exhaustion. Mr Putin increasingly resembles the late Soviet leaders he once implicitly mocked: isolated, suspicious and ideologically rigid. Russia’s younger generation, in particular, has shown far less enthusiasm for the nationalist mythology that sustains the current regime. Polling over several years has consistently suggested weaker support for Mr Putin among younger Russians, many of whom see little future in a closed, militarised state increasingly cut off from the outside world.
Inside Russia, public criticism remains dangerous. The Kremlin’s system of media control and punitive legislation has ensured that overt dissent carries severe personal risk. But repression has not eliminated disappointment; it has merely driven it into private conversations, encrypted messaging channels and expatriate communities abroad.
The paradox of Putinism is that a regime built upon promises of restored national greatness now presides over narrowing horizons. Russia’s economy is increasingly militarised. Its intellectual class has scattered across Europe and the Caucasus. Its politics has calcified into ritualistic displays of loyalty. Even patriotic Russians who once admired Mr Putin’s pragmatism now question whether he remains capable of adapting to reality.
For years, the Kremlin relied upon a tacit social contract: citizens would tolerate authoritarianism in exchange for stability and gradual prosperity. That bargain is visibly fraying. Russians may not yet be prepared for revolt, but many appear increasingly resigned to stagnation — a far more dangerous sentiment for an autocratic system built on the mythology of momentum and revival.
The deeper problem for Mr Putin is that he has spent years eliminating alternative centres of authority. There are few credible successors, fewer independent institutions and almost no trusted mechanisms for political renewal. In the short term, that may preserve his position. In the longer term, it leaves Russia trapped within the limitations of one ageing ruler and the shrinking circle that surrounds him.
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