Vladimir Putin is losing the Russian people as the economy and his war machine reel from the onslaught in Ukraine.
On the economic front, Putin himself recently revealed that GDP shrank in the first two months of this year. On the Ukrainian front, Russian forces last month suffered their first net loss of territory since 2024.
After Russia launched a sudden invasion in 2022, Putin not only failed to defeat Ukraine, but his troops were also unable to fully control the Donetsk region.
“The general sentiment is that enough is enough; you have fought long enough,” a Russian official told the Global Times. washington post last week on condition of anonymity. “In everyone’s opinion, this war lasted longer than World War II, the Great Patriotic War – and at the same time we were not even able to capture a region.”
With Western military aid and innovation from Ukraine’s now booming domestic defense industry, Kyiv has weakened Russia’s economy and military.
Long-range drone strikes deep into Russian territory damaged major oil export hubs and a “shadow fleet” of tankers transporting sanctioned crude.
At the same time, new drone technology has given Ukraine a battlefield advantage, helping to repel Russian forces that have been cut off from the Starlink internet connection that is vital to their drones.
The Kremlin said on Wednesday it would significantly scale back the size of its annual Victory Day military parade in Moscow’s Red Square later this month, acknowledging the heightened threat from Ukrainian drones.
Putin’s approval rating plummets
Ordinary Russians, meanwhile, have been grappling with high inflation caused by military mobilization and defense production, as well as a crackdown on internet access by the Kremlin to limit the spread of grim news about the economy and war.
Even a survey by Russia’s state-owned opinion polling agency showed that Putin’s approval rating has dropped from 77.8% at the beginning of the year to 65.6%, much higher than the 80% before the war.
Recognizing growing economic desperation, some Russian officials have publicly responded to the dire situation.
Last month, Economic Development Minister Maxim Reshetnikov told a business conference that the economy was “not easy” and called for a redistribution of the workforce, which has been strained because of labor shortages caused by the war.
“Of course, it’s not easy to find employees, and wages are going up,” he said. “But nonetheless, we managed all of this somehow because there were reserves somewhere in the economy. Our current record shows that most of those reserves have been exhausted; that’s certainly the case, and the macroeconomic situation is much more difficult.”