Of all the startling messages that Russians have shared with researcher Alexandra Prokopenko about the disturbing realities of life in Vladimir Putin’s dictatorship, there’s one that really stands out.
It’s from the mother of a schoolgirl, revealing how she tries to undo the daily brainwashing inflicted on her daughter by teachers, hopefully neutralising the lies she’s been told about Ukraine’s supposed threat to their country.
“We quite literally have to break the spell on our daughter,” the woman admits to Prokopenko. “In the morning, they fill her head with propaganda at school, and in the evening, over dinner, my husband and I try to explain how things really are. But we have to do it gently and carefully – if she repeats anything at school, she could get in trouble. And so could we.”
Prokopenko has been collecting accounts like this from people back in her homeland for nearly five years, via phone conversations, online messages and social media.
The former political reporter and central bank adviser was outraged by the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. She fled Russia soon afterwards. Like so many of Putin’s opponents, she has been designated a “foreign agent” by the Kremlin, meaning she cannot return without facing immediate arrest.
However, she has kept in touch with civil servants and state officials who she met while serving as a journalist covering government affairs, as well as with a network of bankers and businesspeople from her time working at the heart of Russia’s economy.
She has now written a book, From Sovereigns to Servants, filled with their private admissions, melancholy reflections and defiant statements.
Given how Moscow’s propaganda and censorship normally frighten people into hiding the truth, these stories provide a rare glimpse of what educated citizens really think about Putin as he ratchets up his threats to the rest of Europe.
Some describe how the population desperately tries to avoid military conscription, and are scared of nuclear war. They reveal how people secretly mock Putin as a “fool” who has gone “nuts”, while urging each other to be quiet in case their words are recorded by hidden microphones installed by spies.
Yet others illustrate why so many members of the Russian elite have continued to support Putin, choosing to prioritise personal finances over basic principles.
Prokopenko, 40, despairs about erstwhile friends who have become regime stooges. “They look the same as when I saw them in 2022, but they’re different people now,” she tells me in a video call from her home in Berlin, where she is now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Centre. “I have nothing in common with them.”
Although a few of Prokopenko’s old contacts have adopted Putin’s nationalistic ideology “wholeheartedly”, she feels angrier about the pragmatic majority – who back the president not just for a “survival strategy” but because they “continue making money from the regime”.
But that could be changing, Prokopenko says, as Russia’s economy may have entered what she describes as a “death zone”.
Prokopenko, second left, visiting a Kalashnikov factory with Vladimir Putin in 2010 while he was Russia’s prime minister (Photo: Alexandra Prokopenko)‘For Putin’s bodyguards, you are a threat’
Prokopenko’s parents are Ukrainian and she was born in the republic while it was still part of the Soviet Union – but she grew up in Russia, leaving her with a “huge identity crisis” since the war.
Working as a journalist for the state-run Tass news agency, she followed Putin while he “travelled like crazy across Russia”. She saw close up how cronies agreed with his “completely bullshit” pronouncements. When he met members of the public, it was clear that “Putin doesn’t care about other people”.
She also had to deal with his infamous lateness to meetings. “More than 10 hours was my personal record,” she recalls.
She moved to the independent Vedomosti newspaper and her career was going well, but media limitations grew more repressive. In 2017, her press accreditation was revoked with no explanation. She suspects it was in response to Vedomosti revealing how the FSB intelligence agency was secretly monitoring government ministers.
“You always know that for his bodyguards, you are a threat,” she says.
Prokopenko was working as a communications analyst at Russia’s central bank when rumours began to spread of a potential full-scale assault on Ukraine. She thought it was “impossible” because it would be “absolutely insane”, believing Putin’s threat was merely a “scare operation”.
She was not alone. Right up until the invasion began on 24 February, 2022, high-ranking government insiders believed that “war isn’t profitable for anyone, so there won’t be one”, in the words of one senior official she quotes.
‘I thought it was some prank’
When tanks crossed the border, says Prokopenko, “I immediately started doomscrolling news because I thought it was some prank”. When she realised it wasn’t, she began planning to leave the country.
Moscow’s bureaucrats were equally aghast, she says. One complained that the conflict was “destroying” the country’s financial systems, lamenting that Putin had “torn it all down”. She didn’t know anyone who supported the war, but nobody dared speak out. They just hoped it would be over quicky.
After the massacre of Ukrainian civilians in Bucha a month later, one of her sources realised their country had “crossed the point of no return” with this “abomination”. Another called troops committing war crimes “crooked-handed boneheads”.
Some parroted the Kremlin’s line that the atrocities were a Western fabrication, with one asserting that Russian soldiers “would never do something like that”.
Others saw through Moscow’s lies. One quote reads: “If our propagandists take the stance of ‘you’re all lying’, then – it definitely happened.”
Having served her notice at work and packed up her belongings, she flew to Kazakhstan, then to Serbia and finally to Germany, starting a new life there with her two cats. She followed what was happening back home with astonishment.
Dejected by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Prokopenko flew to Kazakhstan, then Serbia and finally to Germany, starting a new life there with her two cats (Photo: Alexandra Prokopenko)‘Why should I lose my Netflix?’
When the US, EU and UK imposed heavy sanctions, most Russians weren’t angry at their own government. They blamed Europe and America.
Prokopenko gives the example of one Facebook user who called Putin an “idiot” for starting his “stupid” war. Yet they concluded in an online post: “What exactly have I done to the West? Why are they shaming me? Why are they taking away the £20,000 I earned back in 2005 working my ass off in a London bank – money that’s just been sitting there in an English account ever since? Why should I lose my Netflix?”
The FSB spying on civil servants intensified – monitoring who they socialised with, where they went on holiday, and whether they attended protests or donated to opposition parties.
A ministry HR manager revealed to Prokopenko how they were ordered to prevent “discontented” bureaucrats from resigning and fleeing, threatening them with travel bans and security meetings.
Companies had long been forced to keep lists of staff who would be suitable for the armed forces, which were now used to conscript people. “They came for everyone they could get their hands on,” one businessman said.
In some cases, these staff logs were badly outdated. “One woman stormed into HR and nearly beat the staff up because her husband – allegedly disabled – was mobilised,” another businessman told her. Conscription turned people against Putin for ever, he said, because “wounds like that don’t heal”.
‘There is only one captain of our vessel’
Some officials quietly welcomed the prospect of a coup by the Wagner Group mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin in 2023, but many were afraid of admitting this at work in case their offices were bugged. When one civil servant mentioned Prigozhin to a colleague, “they shushed me immediately”.
People began referring to Putin as “Ded”, an insulting term for an old man. They welcomed the idea of the regime being overthrown, even if it meant a violent thug like Prigozhin becoming leader.
Wealthier businesspeople worried about Prigozhin’s chaos unleashing looters. “Can you imagine what they’ll do to our homes when they see how we live?” one said.
In the event, of course, Prigozhin aborted his coup. He went into exile and died two months later, in what is widely believed to have been an assassination. Following the death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny – who is also thought to have been murdered – Russians see no viable alternative leader.
One bureaucrat tells Prokopenko: “There is only one captain of our vessel – Putin – and everything depends on his desires, his temper and his condition.”
Some are genuinely worried about nuclear war, with one saying: “According to Ded, we’re all martyrs with a ticket to paradise.”
For privileged cronies in Moscow, however, business largely continued as normal until recently. One city official recalled a party in late 2024 that featured “crabs, scallops, oysters and caviar, champagne flowing endlessly, and countless escorts”.
Ukrainian attacks on oil refineries such as this one outside Moscow have finally made Russians feel the effect of the war on Ukraine, says Prokopenko (Photo: Sefa Karacan/Getty)‘People are so unhappy with the war’
As the fifth anniversary of Putin’s barbaric full-scale invasion approaches, scenes of flames and thick black clouds rising from Russian warehouses and oil refineries are becoming more common.
Besides the fuel shortages caused by Ukraine’s ramped up drone and missile attacks, sight of the smoke undoubtedly “scares people”, says Prokopenko.
“People are so unhappy with the war that they have started talking about their unhappiness.” This would have been unthinkable a few years ago. She senses a “huge regret” back home “that the future of the country is lost”.
However, she doubts Ukrainian attacks will be “decisive” in ending the war, even if the Russian economy is entering what she calls the “death zone”.
“That’s a metaphor for mountaineers: the altitude where your body starts to consume its own tissue and can’t recover,” she explains – qualifying that this process will lead to “a very slow erosion of the regime”, not a sudden collapse or “a big kaboom”.
Putin will still aim to “outlast everyone in this conflict” while Western support for Ukraine looks fragile, Prokopenko believes. She thinks the only way he could be forced to negotiate is if Xi Jinping pressures him, given how much Russia relies on China.
Like many Russians, she asks herself what society could have done to halt Putin, but finds it hard to answer. “I carry my part of responsibility,” she says, “but responsibility is not guilt.”
She could not be firmer that Ukraine must win, not just for its own sake, but to free Russians from their ruler.
Perhaps age will catch up with him, she says. “All dictators are mortal. Putin is 73. Of course, he could reign next 10 years, but we’re also one stroke from another future.”
But she warns: “I don’t have illusions that after Putin, Russia will immediately switch on to a democratic and liberal path. We probably will see other politicians far more right wing than Putin, and we won’t like what we see.”
‘From Sovereigns to Servants: How the War Against Ukraine Reshaped Russia’s Elite‘ by Alexandra Prokopenko is out now (£24.99, C Hurst & Co)
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