Good morning. There is little doubt that when Vladimir Putin ordered his invasion of Ukraine in 2022, he did not expect his troops to still be embroiled there in 2026. And he surely never envisaged a scaled-down victory parade in Moscow, stripped of military hardware, for fear of Ukrainian drone attacks on his own capital.
Putin has survived dangerous moments before, but with the Russian economy stuttering, his popularity is waning – not only with the public but also with the elites who have underpinned his regime for decades. An undoubted master of survival, the unwritten contract the president has with the Russian people is starting to fray.
For today’s newsletter, I spoke to the Guardian’s Russian affairs reporter, Pjotr Sauer, about this shift in the national mood and whether the man in the Kremlin has any plan at all for what comes next.
Five big stories
Middle East | The US has launched strikes on southern Iran in a test of the seven-week long ceasefire, as both sides played down hopes for an imminent peace deal even as negotiators from Tehran began new talks in Qatar.
UK politics | Rachel Reeves has instructed cabinet colleagues to award government contracts in four critical industries directly to British companies, making clear her irritation that ministers have been sending too much government business abroad.
Scotland | Peter Murrell, once one of the most powerful people in British politics, faces a long prison sentence after he admitted to stealing more than £400,000 from the Scottish National party to fund a lavish personal lifestyle.
Cost of living | Higher prices could persist over the summer even if ceasefire talks between the US and Iran bear fruit, consumers have been warned, with economic shock waves likely to be felt “for many months to come”.
UK news | The fierce heat sweeping across Europe over the bank holiday weekend has beaten the UK’s all-time temperature record for May, with scorching highs of close to 35C.
In depth: ‘Putin has broken the unwritten contract he had with the population’
Russian president Vladimir Putin, fourth from right, with foreign leaders. Photograph: Pavel Bednyakov/EPAVladimir Putin must have believed – and his top aides must have assured him – that the Russian army would simply march into Kyiv in 2022, topple Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government, and install a puppet replacement that would rapidly cede sovereignty of the Donbas to Moscow. That did not happen.
“In the fifth year of the war, we’re seeing growing ripples of discontent in Russian society,” Pjotr tells me. “Russia is a deeply authoritarian state, where people can’t just go and protest, but we’re seeing that his approval ratings are slipping.”
Putin’s approval rating was at 63% months before invading Ukraine. The month after the assault began, it rose to 83%. But it is on the slide again, and in April this year Russia’s general happiness index hit a 15-year low, according to a state pollster.
“His approval ratings are still very high if you compare them to western governments,” Pjotr says, “but it is now on the same level as it was before the full-scale invasion.”
A sense of unease
While the invasion of Ukraine initially gave Putin’s ratings a boost – a “rally round the flag effect”, as Pjotr puts it – that has long since worn off. As well as polling, another telltale sign of discontent is found online. “Bloggers who have been traditionally quite pro-Putin are starting to speak out about a number of problems in the country,” Pjotr tells me.
A longstanding political truism that applies to governments across the globe is “it’s the economy, stupid”. Indeed, the economy in Russia is faltering. “Growth is projected to be only around 0.4%. In reality, Russia could even already be in a recession,” Pjotr says. The effect for ordinary people are visible, as higher taxes and rising inflation have sent groceries and household bills soaring.
That sense of unease has been exacerbated by draconian moves by security services to impose complete internet shutdowns. This isn’t just the inconvenience of not being able to scroll through popular Russian sites such as VKontakte or Dzen; it is a matter of basic infrastructure.
“You have to realise that Russia is a deeply digital society,” Pjotr says. “In Moscow and St Petersburg, there are tens of thousands of delivery personnel and drivers for the Russian equivalent of Uber. Suddenly, with these shutdowns, the capital was paralysed, which has led to billions of roubles in losses.”
A broken contract
“Taken together,” Pjotr says, “the internet shutdowns, the economy doing worse, no clear path to victory, and more Ukrainian drones hitting Russian cities – Putin has broken the unwritten contract he had with the population. Since the start of the war, the deal was, ‘I’ll do this war while keeping you guys as shielded as possible from the consequences.’ Now, more Russians are seeing that their lives are changing as well.”
This disillusionment has reached the upper echelons of the Kremlin. The Russian elite – both the government officials and the oligarchs – initially hoped for a quick victory or a Trump-brokered peace deal. Now, they see a president with no exit strategy. As one business leader told Pjotr for this recent report, there is “a growing sense that some kind of catastrophe is looming”.
No plan B?
If the elites are looking for a way out, the man at the top certainly doesn’t appear to be. Despite the occasional rumour about his health, Putin, who is 73, appears to be in relatively good mental and physical shape. More importantly, he has successfully trapped himself in power.
“There are no indications that Putin is planning a successor,” Pjotr says. “He changed the constitution to allow him to run again, and with the next elections not until 2030, he has many years left he could rule.”
The reality for Putin is that power is now a matter of survival. Between the international criminal court warrant for his arrest and the long memory of the Ukrainian security services, retirement to a cushy Black Sea villa is no longer a viable option.
“He knows he’ll forever be a target,” Pjotr says. “He believes that as long as he’s in power, he’s safe. The people below him are too scared to even talk about succession; he’s approaching his third decade in power, and there’s no sign he’s going anywhere.”
The information vacuum
It has previously been a mistake to count Putin out. As Pjotr points out, we have been here before. In 2011, amid mass protests in Moscow, his ratings were in the doldrums; he fixed that by annexing Crimea. More recently, the 2023 Wagner rebellion led by Yevgeny Prigozhin appeared to be the greatest threat to his authority in decades. Yet Putin handled the mutiny with his characteristic, ruthless brand of “Russian governance”.
Prigozhin’s subsequent death in a plane crash served as a visceral warning to any other elites considering a similar move. “Putin managed to deal with that quite ruthlessly,” Pjotr says. “He seemed to survive that situation. But now, it doesn’t seem like he has another trump card to boost his popularity to play, as he had with Crimea or Ukraine.”
Despite public discontent, the consensus among analysts is that any real threat to the regime will come from inside the Kremlin, not the streets. Former defence minister Sergei Shoigu has been touted as a potential challenger – but Putin has moved to systematically dismantle his power base by arresting his closest associates. Oligarchs, meanwhile, appear to be sitting quiet and hoping it will always be somebody else’s turn to catch Putin’s eye – Vadim Moshkovich, the billionaire founder of a major agricultural firm, was the most recent to face arrest.
One question that vexes even western intelligence agencies is the extent to which Putin receives accurate information. The sources Pjotr and Shaun Walker spoke to for their weekend read on the topic say it is hard to gauge to what extent the Russian president lives in a “parallel reality”.
He keeps making speeches, Pjotr notes, where it seems Ukraine is permanently about to collapse. While the west waits for a moment of Russian “collapse”, Putin remains fixated on a singular goal: the full capture of the Donbas by the end of the year.
“The big question is whether Putin is being misled or told overly positive reports by his military commanders,” Pjotr says. “In an authoritarian state, the people below you always try to tell you how good things are.”
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