Russians are starting to acknowledge that President Vladimir Putin has led the country to a dead end and can’t shape its future, according to a former senior official in the Kremlin.
In a recent Economist op-ed authored anonymously, the former official pointed out that fellow government peers in Moscow, regional governors and businessmen have stopped using the first person plural when describing Putin’s actions.
In other words, Russia’s elites found a subtle way to no longer express solidarity with Putin, describing what “he” does rather than what “we” do.
That shift took place last spring, but does not signal a rebellion is imminent, the former official added, as the state still controls key levers of repression and fear.
At the same time, the regime has stopped bothering to sell a narrative of national restoration or modernization to the rest of the country, which is losing enormous amounts of blood and treasure in the battlefields of Ukraine.
