A new trend in #Russia social media that is worth watching while it’s still visible to the outside is a new wave of moaning about, well, in short, the failure of the great geostrategic plan initiated by #Putin in 2014.

Here’s one such compilation of the “Russians moaning about restrictions” genre, but there’s much more if you follow Russian social media (in Russian, subtitles in English and Polish)

https://video.echelon.pl/w/4B7v6qY5rzmj2mg7YiBonW

The context is that many celebrities, activists and just regular people somehow living off the Internet are in panic of the upcoming network communications restrictions which are expected to be much more effective than anything that Roskomnadzor implemented before.

It’s not like they did not realise that before - as a matter of fact, when I was going to Russia after 2014 most people fully realised the impact the “Russia rising from its knees” (=invading Ukraine and starting offensive actions against EU) will have on their daily lives by restricting whole sectors of economy, travel, raising inflation etc. They just didn’t care, because majority believed that the net gains from the invasion on Ukraine will eventually exceed these costs. The gains were expected to be political (“everyone will fear us”), economic (unrestricted access to natural resources in Ukraine) and demographic (“20 millions more serfs just as miserable as us will share the load”).

Those living off the state funds (that is mostly massive military and propaganda industry) gained enormously right away from 2014 and even more in 2022. The problem is that as of 2026 most Russia’s budget reserves are depleted and cash shortages start to impact the very people who depended on this easy money for years. So they are panicking, because unlike in 2022 or even 2023 there seems to be no “plan B” and Putin’s subsequent decisions - or lack of these - seems to be even more detached from reality than before.