Non-Victory Day: Putin’s authoritarian regime has entered a period of instability

Two periods of military Putinism

What appears to be, if not a reversal, then at least a visible shift in Russia’s prevailing mood is not the result of some recent Kremlin blunder, as many believe. The most popular explanations focus on the 'personal factor', namely Putin’s psychological condition and its impact on the quality of his decisions. In our view, however, the developments reflect structural changes. Even the assault on Telegram and attempts to decisively isolate the Runet are not causes but consequences of altered circumstances. Military Putinism, that is the political regime that emerged in response to the failure of the Ukrainian blitzkrieg and its transformation into a protracted military conflict, has entered a new and crisis-ridden phase of its evolution.

The first phase of the regime’s formation occurred in 2022–2023 and consisted of an improvised adaptation to the humiliating failure of the dash towards Kyiv. It became clear that the Kremlin possessed neither a capable army able to overcome Ukrainian resistance nor the industrial capacity to replenish weapons and ammunition stocks. For roughly eighteen months, until autumn 2023, the Kremlin was effectively rebuilding its war machine from scratch, urgently experimenting with methods of manpower recruitment, including 'partial' mobilisation, private military companies and Prigozhin’s prison recruitment scheme, while also reorganising unified command structures, expanding military production and drawing on Soviet-era reserves.

In domestic politics, the regime was forced sharply to expand repressive and censorship practices in order to contain rising discontent. It also attempted a propaganda-driven patriotic mobilisation, portraying the invasion of Ukraine almost as a new Great Patriotic War, an existential struggle against 'new fascism' in which the fate of the nation was at stake. At the same time, this period was characterised by a relatively low level of intra-elite repression: high-profile anti-corruption cases were effectively frozen, as were personnel reshuffles and even gubernatorial replacements. Putin sought to create the impression among elites that they were all in the same boat with him and that no separate path to salvation existed.

From around autumn 2023, a second phase of military Putinism began: a phase of stabilisation and growing self-confidence. Supplies of weapons and ammunition became regular and sufficient, while an ingenious system of commercial military contracts began to provide a stable flow of manpower to the front. At the same time, massive use of National Wealth Fund resources and oil and gas revenues fuelled a military-economic boom, with the economy recording annual growth of around 5%.

The main scenario for the military campaign during this period was a ‘war of attrition’. Having failed in its blitzkrieg, the Kremlin sought to demonstrate that its superiority in resources and manpower made the advance of the Russian army, and ultimately Ukraine’s military defeat, inevitable. Kyiv, therefore, would sooner or later have to accept a peace agreement on Moscow’s terms. Although Russia’s military gains in 2024 were in fact modest, with the army capturing only around 4,000 square kilometres, the Kremlin drew confidence from Donald Trump’s arrival in the White House, which deprived Ukraine of American assistance and promoted the same notion of Ukraine’s inevitable defeat in a war of attrition and the need for concessions to Moscow.

The favourable economic situation and the functioning commercial contract system enabled the regime to tone down its mobilisation rhetoric, especially as its principal advocates, the Z-bloggers, came to be regarded as dangerous allies following the Prigozhin mutiny. In their place emerged a conservative militarist ideological doctrine portraying the country as a besieged fortress of traditional values, aggressively promoted across public administration, education and public life. National mobilisation was ultimately replaced by the commercialisation of 'meat-grinder assaults', while patriotic enthusiasm gave way to the routine of endless administrative and bureaucratic pressure and prohibitions.

Repression directed at the elite, by contrast, intensified significantly during this period. Demonstrative anti-corruption cases and the redistribution of assets assumed the character of a state campaign designed to punish insufficient loyalty and discipline the wavering. In Putin’s imagination, the common boat had become a victorious battleship from which he could, at his leisure, throw overboard anyone who aroused suspicion, hooded and bound, both as punishment and as a warning to others.

The third period: causes and triggers

Several factors marked the decline of this most prosperous period of military Putinism. First, throughout 2025 the bubble of the war economy began to deflate. Between 2022 and 2025, more than 12 trillion roubles from the National Wealth Fund were spent supporting it, leaving reserves virtually exhausted while current revenues declined as oil prices fell amid oversupply in global energy markets. The collapse of the war-economy bubble exposed its distorted legacy: intensive budgetary stimulus had drained resources from the civilian commercial sector while simultaneously creating substantial inflationary pressure.

Russia’s consolidated budget expenditure in 2025 exceeded 39% of GDP, compared with an average level of 34.5% during 2011–2019. At the same time, the rent used to finance the additional 4.5% of GDP in spending had disappeared, and these costs could no longer be shifted onto anyone other than citizens and private businesses. Faced with a crisis in public finances, the Russian authorities significantly increased the tax burden. Alongside rises in all three major taxes, personal income tax, VAT and corporation tax, the expansion of VAT coverage for small businesses, and increases in indirect taxes and levies, the government, under the banner of 'formalising' the economy, tightened control over financial transactions. This has resulted in a further increase in the effective tax burden and a broader extraction of resources from the private sector.

Second, the military campaign of 2025 cast doubt on the viability of the war-of-attrition strategy itself. Despite enormous human and material expenditures, a second year of offensives in the Donbas failed to deliver any significant battlefield success for the Kremlin. At the same time, it became clear that there was little remaining capacity for further expansion of the military machine without serious domestic consequences. Nor did the Kremlin’s geopolitical calculations prove correct: expectations of a collapse in European support for Ukraine and hopes that Donald Trump would engineer a peace settlement favourable to Moscow failed to materialise.

It is now believed that the war in Iran has diverted the US president’s attention from the negotiations on Ukraine. But this is not entirely the case. The negotiations had already reached a deadlock by the end of 2025. Kyiv and its European allies stopped fearing Trump, who now appears to lack sufficient leverage not only over the Kremlin, but also over Ukraine. Most importantly, there is no convincing evidence that Moscow is winning the war of attrition. This, in turn, undermines the central argument underpinning the negotiation track. As a result, any return to that process at the present stage is unlikely in principle.

The costs of the war remain incomparably lower for Russia than for Kyiv. Yet their visible increase shocks the Russian population no less than winter heating shortages shock Ukrainians. The drone war has entered a new phase, and preparations for this year’s non-parade became a vivid demonstration of its new reality: most of Russia has turned into a zone of vulnerability. Over the past year, Kyiv has managed not merely to 'bring the war onto Russian soil', but to make it part of the daily information environment and a feature of everyday life.

Finally, the assault on Telegram and attempts effectively to isolate the Runet have become, on the one hand, a reaction by the regime to worsening economic conditions and battlefield dynamics, developments that are bound to affect public sentiment, and, on the other hand, a trigger for the vertical crystallisation of ‘war resentment’. Some are fed up with bans, others with taxes, a third group with the ever-present sword of punishment and a sense of powerlessness. What unites them all is the attempted invasion and seizure of the sphere of their private digital autonomy, namely social networks and private communications. This encroachment is interpreted as an unjust repression imposed despite four years of demonstrated loyalty.

The reasons for dissatisfaction with the regime among elites and ordinary citizens usually differ: some lack bread, while others complain that their pearls are too small. Under normal circumstances, this prevents the emergence of mutual solidarity. The danger for any regime arises when grievances from above and below begin to intersect. In such moments, discontent acquires a vertical dimension. Elites formulate a legitimate rhetoric of dissatisfaction, which then becomes a pattern and justification for 'fair' demands, protest petitions and everyday resistance among ordinary citizens. Bonya’s appeal entered the popular imagination: various triggers of discontent merged into a single picture and acquired a clear target.

The Grail has cracked: what next?

The developments outlined above suggest that this is not a matter of isolated difficulties. The regime of military Putinism has entered a new phase, one far more problematic and less stable than the previous one, and the answer to whether it can withstand these challenges and this instability will not come tomorrow or in a month’s time. Its rapid collapse is unlikely. Indeed, such a prospect, if it were suddenly to emerge in the near future, would probably alarm many of today’s dissatisfied citizens, who currently voice only cautious demands of the regime. At the same time, the grail of military Putinism has unmistakably cracked, not with a ‘bang’ but with an already unpleasant creak. We will have to watch the fate of this crack in the near future.

Putin is no stranger to the problem of spreading domestic discontent. However, previous episodes of this kind, in 2011–2013 and 2018–2020, now appear relatively mild by comparison with current circumstances. An unsuccessful war and one and a half million dead and wounded constitute not a terminal, but certainly a profound challenge for any regime. At a first approximation, three channels can be identified through which internal tensions may develop and intensify.

The economic problems that have emerged certainly do not appear critical. Rather, they are removing the cushioning layer that previously allowed both citizens and elites to tolerate the prolonged war and sanctions. It is now sometimes said that Russia’s elites have lost their 'vision of the future'. This is only partly true. Arguably, no such vision existed three years ago either. What the elites have lost is their belief that the regime remains a guarantor that this still vaguely defined future will eventually assume acceptable contours. Two or three years ago, the regime’s apparent successes in overcoming sanctions, stimulating the economy and building a new military machine suggested that such confidence was justified. Today, serious doubts have emerged, and many within the elite no longer see themselves as part of that future, suspecting instead that they are among those intended to be consumed on the road towards it.

The threat to the regime is not the economic situation itself, but the fact that a way out of the war, any conclusion acceptable to the regime, is tied to a further concentration of resources in the hands of the state. Those resources can now only be extracted directly from the pockets of citizens and private businesses. It appears that the regime, businesses and citizens alike all understand this and are preparing for it in their own ways.

The second challenge for the regime is the increasingly fragile state of its communication with the population. During the 'classical' period of the 2000s and 2010s, its strength lay in 'soft' manipulative propaganda, transmitted primarily through television. This channel formed the foundation of public loyalty, supplemented by other instruments of authoritarian governance. Today, the networked digital environment must replace television as the principal instrument, while 'hard' propaganda is expected to become the main means of control. Whereas 'soft' propaganda, rooted in the practices of PR and marketing, merely sought to persuade citizens that the country’s successes reflected wise leadership while failures and problems stemmed from external causes, 'hard' propaganda requires ideological indoctrination that justifies repression against dissenters, tighter living standards and endurance in the face of hardship. The past three years have demonstrated that the regime struggles to create such a product. It knows how to punish and bribe with conviction, but it has proved incapable of persuasion and ideological mobilisation. Having largely abandoned this practice during the previous phase of its evolution, it may now find it difficult to return to it.

Finally, the third challenge, which is at once 'subjective' and, paradoxically, perhaps the most pressing and acute, can be described as the challenge of escalating incompetence and the associated conflict within the elites. The problem here is that Vladimir Putin himself and the security officials surrounding him, on whom he increasingly relies, lack sufficient competence in the areas where they are required to make decisions, both military and civilian. At the very least, they appear less competent than the civilian wing of the Putin coalition.

However, this circumstance only serves to heighten their suspicion and distrust of this other faction. Possessing greater political power, they are unwilling to acknowledge their own incompetence because such an admission would entail transferring authority and initiative into the hands of rival groups. As a result, they are more likely to insist upon the correctness and inevitability of the strategies they have chosen, thereby increasing both the costs of their own incompetence and tensions between the two wings of the elite. Such a scenario could accelerate movement towards crisis, even if its structural preconditions still appear insufficiently developed.

The difficulty of forecasting social processes lies in the fact that they are reciprocal in nature. Various changes and challenges provoke responses from the participants involved, to which the opposing side may in turn react in different ways. The range of possible responses is shaped by circumstances and structural factors, but variations within that range can nevertheless direct events along diverging paths. Historical development is simultaneously determined and indeterminate. For now, however, it is sufficient to mark tomorrow’s Non-Victory Day as the point at which military Putinism entered a regime of instability.