Putin’s pact with the Russian population is fraying

Below is Lara Marlow's column in the weekend edition of The Irish Times.

It is a shocking story and what are we doing to stop a dictator? Mother Russia has lost over half a million soldiers since the beginning of Putin's 'Special Military Operation'. It is indeed a special operation.

Marlowe has to be admired for her great writing and for her courage too. It's part of Putin's stock in trade to see to it that his enemies disappear.

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Like all dictators, the Russian president is paranoid. The more he fears his own people and possible challengers, the greater the repression.

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Vladimir Putin long maintained a tacit understanding with the Russian people. They could enjoy stability and relative prosperity in exchange for loyalty and an absence of personal freedoms. In 2022 Putin added a promise to restore national pride through the “special military operation” in Ukraine.

In this fifth summer of the full-scale war, fighting has shifted from the eastern front to an air war that makes civilians on both sides vulnerable to sudden, violent death. Putin’s pact with his people is fraying. Forty per cent of the federal budget is spent on the war. Inflation is high and the economy is on the verge of recession. With a thousand Russian soldiers being killed or wounded daily and Ukrainian attacks deep inside Russia, it has become impossible to ignore the war.

In the spring, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, expanded what he calls “long-range sanctions” – a drone and missile campaign that has targeted the Russian energy sector, military industry, transport and logistics.

A third of 34 large Russian oil refineries have been hit by Ukrainian drones, disabling 40 per cent of its production capacity according to Ukraine’s army chief, resulting in rationing and long queues for petrol. In retaliation Russia destroyed more than 200 Ukrainian petrol stations this summer.

Drones

Ukraine has targeted at least 15 facilities belonging to Wildberries, the online market that is like Amazon, DHL and eBay rolled into one and accounts for a significant portion of the Russian economy. Wildberries sells helmets, flak jackets and drone components, in addition to normal consumer items. Tens of millions of customers who enjoyed ordering online and receiving rapid deliveries have lost that convenience.

Ukraine produces up to 10 million drones annually. The sheer quantity enables it to send swarms of hundreds of drones at a time, ensuring that some get through. On July 6th, Ukrainian drones attacked the Omsk refinery in western Siberia, 2,800km from Kyiv, the deepest Ukrainian drone strike ever against Russia’s energy sector.

Western governments estimate half a million Russian soldiers have been killed in Ukraine. Between 30,000 and 35,000 casualties are lost there monthly, more than twice the number of soldiers the Soviet Union admitted to losing during its 10-year occupation of Afghanistan.

Protest over the shocking number of military losses was long muted, because recruiters focused on prisoners and poor ethnic minorities from the Asian east of the country. But Russia is now losing more men than it can recruit, and there’s a strong rumour that Putin will draft up to 500,000 men after the September 18th-20th elections to the Duma.

Though both sides claim not to target civilians, the escalating air war is claiming more civilian lives. Russia has increased the proportion of extremely lethal ballistic missiles in its bombardments of Ukrainian cities.

Last month saw the highest civilian casualties in Ukraine since April 2022. Ukraine’s civilian victims outnumber Russians fivefold. The New York Times reports that 1,695 Ukrainian civilians were killed in the first seven months of this year, a 25 per cent increase on 2025. According to the Conflict Intelligence Team, cited by the New York Times, 327 Russian civilians were killed during the same period, more than double the 145 Russian civilians killed in the first seven months of 2025.

The carnage has renewed appeals from the self-described peace camp in the West for Ukraine to exercise restraint and make concessions to end the war. It’s the cold war era “don’t provoke the Russian bear” argument all over again.

Putin long allowed small parties in the Duma to oppose his United Russia party on insignificant issues to create an illusion of pluralism. That ended this week, when the Yabloko (Apple) party was banned from running in next month’s election, ensuring that no antiwar candidates can stand.

Internet shutdown

Real power in Russia lies with the siloviki or “strongmen” who, like Putin, rose up through the security services. Like all dictators, Putin is paranoid. The more he fears his own people and possible challengers, the greater the repression by the FSB. The intelligence service has taken control of the internet, the justice system and propaganda in schools.

In February Putin shut down Instagram, Telegram and WhatsApp. Russians are allowed to use the Max digital platform, under FSB surveillance. Some Russians have one phone on Max and another with a VPN or virtual private network to enable them to circumvent the internet shutdown. Putin is trying to shut down VPNs.

Tension between the regime and the population manifests itself in small ways. Victoria Bonya, a Russian model and influencer with 13 million followers who lives in Monaco, began an 18-minute video complaint with the words, “Mr Putin, people are afraid of you”. The retired Olympic gold medal gymnast Margarita Mamun, who still lives in Russia, gave a daring television interview in which she declared, “I dream of freedom . . . I dream the war will end and people will stop dying.”

The Returnees, a documentary by journalists from Novaya Gazeta newspaper in which soldiers returning from Ukraine describe the war as hell on earth, has been viewed by 1.7 million Russians on independent viewing platforms.

Bloomberg reports tens of billions of dollars in capital flight from Russia this year. Russian oligarchs desperately want the war to end because it is depleting their fortunes. Putin, who has never sent an email and does not use a computer or mobile phone, has ignored pleas from business leaders who say they cannot function without the internet.

At the June economic forum in St Petersburg, Putin claimed, Trump-like, that the economy had never been better. He did not acknowledge black smoke overhead from a Ukrainian drone strike. A former news editor from Russian state television, now in exile, claims journalists prepare a special news broadcast for Putin nightly, shorn of anything that might anger or upset him.

Anyone claiming to know what goes on inside Putin’s brain is a charlatan, the Nobel laureate and founder of Novaya Gazeta, Dmitry Muratov, told Steve Rosenberg of the BBC. In speeches, Putin insists he will lead Russia to victory in Ukraine. “It cannot be a victory when two Slavic nations have ripped a million people to shreds,” says Muratov.