Victoria Bonya says authorities too scared to raise issues with Vladimir Putin, whose approval ratings are declining
The Kremlin is grappling with the fallout from the viral spread of a celebrity blogger’s criticism of Russian authorities, as Vladimir Putin’s approval ratings register their sixth consecutive weekly decline.
Victoria Bonya, a household name in Russia who rose to fame in 2006 onDom-2, the country’s answer to the reality TV show Big Brother, posted avideoon Monday warning the Russian president that a string of mounting problems risked spiralling out of control.
“The people are afraid of you, artists are afraid, governors are afraid,” she said, in the 18-minute video on Instagram, which has garnered 26m views and more than 1.3m likes in the past four days.
She rattled off a list of issues she said no regional governor would dare raise with Putin directly: flooding in Dagestan, oil pollution along the Black Sea coast, livestock culls in Siberia, internetblackoutsand a squeeze on small businesses from rising prices and taxes.
“You know what the risk is?” asked Bonya, who lives outsideRussia. “That people will stop being afraid, and they’re being squeezed into a coiled spring, and that one day that coiled spring will shoot out.”
Moscow on Thursday took the unusual step of publicly acknowledging the sharp criticism, saying work was under way to address problems identified by Bonya.
The influencer’s comments notably stopped short of directly targeting Putin himself or the war inUkraine, prompting speculation that the intervention may have been coordinated with Moscow to signal that public grievances are being heard before parliamentary elections later this year.
The approach fits a familiar Kremlin playbook: casting Putin as the “good tsar” kept in the dark by errant officials. The narrative has helped the president deflect blame for the country’s problems on to subordinates, preserving his personal standing even as discontent grows.
Political analysts, however, said the outburst was unlikely to have been coordinated, but rather reflected a spontaneous reaction to simmering discontent across the country.
Source: Drudge Report
