Russians No Longer Fear Putin as Cracks Emerge Wit…
Russians No Longer Fear Putin as Cracks Emerge Wit…
MOSCOW — For nearly a quarter of a century, the core currency of Vladimir V. Putin’s autocracy has been fear. It was a highly calculated, institutionalized dread that silenced dissent, cowed the country’s billionaire class into political submission, and kept ordinary citizens quietly resigned to their fate. But across Russia today, that currency is rapidly devaluing.
A mounting domestic energy crisis, relentless Ukrainian drone strikes penetrating deep into the Russian heartland, and public fractures among the ultra-wealthy elites are exposing the limits of the Kremlin’s coercive power. More than two years after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the state’s elaborate machinery of fear is beginning to stall—and in its place, a dangerous, unpredictable anger is rising.
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