Putin under pressure.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s long-held iron grip on power is being challenged by the war in Ukraine and his government’s authoritarian crackdowns.

He finds himself in unfamiliar political territory, publicly questioned by some of the country’s elite and embarrassed by Ukraine’s successful strikes deep into Russian cities.

Why is this happening now, more than four years into Putin’s war?

And does this mean that Putin is vulnerable?

Coming up on "Compass Points."

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Additional support is provided by Friends of the News Hour.

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Thank you.

Once again, moderator Nick Schifrin.

Hello, and welcome to "Compass Points" from London.

Since 2000, Russian President Vladimir Putin has ruled Russia with the classic chapters out of the authoritarian handbook, creating an external enemy, offering prosperity in exchange for political apathy, crushing criticism, and distributing patronage among the elites.

But, today, with the economy strained, wildly unpopular restrictions on the Internet, and Ukrainian attacks challenging Russian cities and energy exports, we’re beginning to see some cracks in the Kremlin’s support.

To talk about the state of Russian politics and criticism of the man who, for 25 years, has been at their center, I came here to talk to Arkady Ostrovsky, the Russia editor of The Economist.

Arkady Ostrovsky, thanks very much.

- Appreciate it.

Ostrovsky: Thank you.

I want to start with increased public doubts of Vladimir Putin’s stewardship of the Russian Federation.

There’s been prominent questioning of the war in Ukraine.

We see social media videos of ordinary Russians voicing some criticism.

And, as you recently highlighted, even a beauty influencer posted a video with a series of grievances that, as you pointed out, captured the disaffection of the loyalist majority.

What’s going on, do you think, and how significant is it?

I think it is significant.

I think there is a change of mood.

I think it’s to do with several things.

And I think the most important is the lack of any obvious gains or progress in the war, or benefits of it, while the costs are mounting up.

The economic costs, and they come in various forms.

There is a budget deficit.

There is increase in taxes.

There is infringement on people’s daily lives in a way that the war hadn’t done before, because mobilization affected a part of the population.

It didn’t last that long.

And the contract army, that’s very interesting, because people see, "OK, well, here is the deal.

These people take money."

The fact that some of them are cursed or lured, it’s kind of people try to disengage from that.

That’s why Russia could absorb this enormous losses of over a million people in the dead and wounded.

And that’s why it hasn’t produced the effect that it produced in the wars of Vietnam or the Soviet war in Afghanistan, which was much smaller.

So the gains and the benefits are not there at all.

The fatigue and frustration are very palpable.

People are completely exhausted by it, because while the state has pretended "this is a special military operation, "your lives are not getting affected."

In fact, they are getting affected.

But people have been living under strain in a kind of almost a state of emergency of this kind of shrill propaganda.

Airports regularly get shut down and the outages of the Internet.

I think that was actually the last kind of important bit we can talk about.

So what’s really interesting about this moment is that this is not a dissatisfaction amongst the anti-war minority, which has always been there consistently at 15, 20% of the population, even in this incredibly repressive regime, are telling pollsters, "We don’t like it, we’re against war."

There is also very evident dissatisfaction of the pro-war kind of zealots, the military bloggers.

Who say it’s not enough.

Ostrovsky: Saying it’s not enough.

"Russia hasn’t been properly mobilized.

"The economy hasn’t been put on the war footing.

"The elite keeps stealing.

"We’re not progressing."

What’s interesting, actually, some of the criticism you hear on two sides of the spectrum are starting to merge.

But the really important stuff is happening in the middle, in those 60, 70% of what I would call kind of the loyalists or conformist people.

These are the people who say, "Yeah, we support the war."

What they mean is, "Leave us out of it."

This is where the dissatisfaction is becoming very prominent.

And a lot of it’s to do with the Internet, because that affects everybody.

It’s an infringement on everyday life.

Well, now that you’ve said that twice, explain that.

Why did Internet restrictions that came out of the FSB change the mood?

Why did it affect so many people?

And why have people been so angry about it?

Because in big cities, it’s a huge part of everyday life, because it’s messaging your children at school.

It’s paying for your parking.

It’s paying for services.

It’s ordering food.

It affects everything.

It’s not political.

It’s existential in a way.

And what’s interesting is not just what the blogger said.

I mean, the really interesting thing is the reaction to it, because the reaction to it was within the first few hours, current brand from the top of my head, but over a million views.

And then within the first 4 or 5 days, 30 million views, nearly 100,000 of comments, "Thank you for saying it."

Now, this is the blog.

She’s not an activist.

She’s not a politician.

She’s not a journalist.

Schifrin: She’s not in Russia.

Ostrovsky: She’s not in Russia, although her views are.

She’s in the south of France.

She promotes her brand of cosmetics and her lifestyle.

What she is, actually, she shows kind of the normal country.

Yeah, they’re not perfect.

Some of them are cynical, quite kind of normal, ordinary people, the same people who, you know, in the West with the same spending habits.

Schifrin: Right.

It’s their dissatisfaction that matters.

Let me bring up the elites as well, though, because you had, in The Economist, a former senior Russian official write this, that senior officials, governors across the country, businessmen have recently stopped using the first person when talking about the country’s actions.

Quote... [Reading] Why is that significant?

Nobody wanted this war in the elites.

Nobody expected this war in the elites.

But when it started, OK, here we are.

Now we’re just all in it.

The elites are starting to question.

A, they never said it.

They never embraced this war fully.

But they’re starting to question whether Putin has any plan.

They’re starting to question why there are no gains.

But most importantly, they’re starting to question whether he’s got any vision for the future.

Because if there is one thing, if there’s one word I’ve been picking up on wherever I talk to, the elites, the ordinary people, regional elites, businessmen, it’s this word dead end.

We’re at a dead end.

And this is why people like this, who wouldn’t have spoken to us, wouldn’t have written for us two years ago, are starting to speak.

The fact that they’re starting to speak is a sign of frustration.

The fact that there is a dead end is a very serious problem, because it doesn’t mean it’s just static.

Because for the Russian army and for the Russian political system, dead end or stagnation is really dangerous.

It’s not that you can just carry on like this, because there is a realization that the longer you carry on, particularly now, the more you lose.

Russia is being attired.

Putin moved into this phase of the attritional war, hoping to break Ukraine.

The attrition actually is turning against him.

And also they’re seeing the damage, the elites are seeing the damage caused by Ukrainian drones and missiles in the Russian rear.

Schifrin: Yeah, yeah.

Let me ask about the front line in a second, but with this former official, who I should say is anonymous, so I won’t ask you who the person is, but this former official, "Russians are starting to imagine a future without him."

Ostrovsky: Yeah.

- How widespread is that?

Do we know?

My sense is pretty widespread.

He has become, for a lot of them, he’s become a liability.

There is still fear.

Don’t get me wrong.

I mean, the repression works.

There is a fear not just of him, there is a fear of chaos.

So if you imagine, and the metaphor I use is like, he’s a nail on which everything hangs.

Because Russia has moved into this state with this war, when it’s impossible, people are struggling to imagine what comes after.

What people know is that this model, this social, economic, political model has exhausted itself.

And so they’re still very fearful of what happens if he’s removed and the whole thing sort of descends into chaos.

But it’s increasingly clear that he is becoming more of a liability.

He always thrived on the idea, I know best, I’ve got a roadmap.

Suddenly, people are starting to doubt whether he’s got any way out, where he’s leading it.

And yet, this is the people who are in their 40s and 50s, they will outlive him.

And they’re starting to think, what kind of entity comes out of this war?

Is it going to be Russia at all?

Is it going to be one country?

So let’s go into the war a little bit.

In public, we’ve seen former Kremlin officials talking about full-scale defeat.

That was a prominent post.

We saw a think tanker write in a foreign policy journal about the war’s goals being no longer realistic.

Has it become normalized to question the war in Ukraine and how it’s going?

Good question.

I mean, you quote think tanks.

I mean, whether it’s being questioned openly in Moscow, it’s hard for me to tell.

Certainly, as I said, the elites are becoming more vocal.

Everybody can see that the reasons for which he started the war are unachievable.

In a way, what’s happened is it’s become clear that this war is unwinnable.

Now, where is this line between the war is unwinnable and it’s a defeat?

I think what prevents a lot of the elites thinking more about the settlement is this fear of defeat, the fear of humiliation, the fear of having to pay reparations, and Russia is a nuclear power.

So I think that a lot of them are struggling to think, "So what does it actually mean "that the war is unwinnable and its goals are unachieved?"

Because NATO is there, Ukraine is there, NATO hasn’t moved its borders, the European Union hasn’t fallen apart.

The lines have barely shifted at all.

So what he’s actually achieved, he can’t even achieve the minimal task, and the minimal task was take the whole of Donbass.

At this moment, the Russian rate of advance is about 200 soldiers per square kilometer.

Even if Putin were to call mobilization, he is not going to get to where he wants to for a long time.

We are regularly upwards of 30,000 casualties, death, serious wounded, and the ratio is shifting that Ukraine is imposing on Russia.

Right.

And what’s even more significant is that they’re not recruiting at the rate at which they’re losing lives and losing soldiers.

The rate of recruitment is falling as the number of death is going up, which is understandable, because by now, even those who went for money know, when people take money to go to war, they don’t go to die in the war, they go to make money.

Now that they see that this has become a complete meat grinder, and there is another factor, which is that as people take money, it’s a corrupt system where the officers immediately see it as a resource.

So they extract money from those who took the money, and if they don’t pay, they zero them out.

So there is a whole awful economy of the battlefield, which is economy in death, basically.

Schifrin: Zooming in on the front lines, let’s just look at that for a second.

Signs, strategic signs that Ukraine has shifted the momentum.

Targeting Russian logistics on the road that leads to Crimea.

Of course, this is the land bridge that the war was supposed to design to create.

Ukraine has fire control over some of that road, according a U.S.

official told me.

We’ve talked about casualties.

Ukraine is also seizing more territory than it’s losing, the first time that’s happened in a couple of years.

And these long range drone strikes, whether St.

Petersburg or elsewhere, comes into Russian cities, also challenges Russian refining.

The significant total of all of that, is that what you see as proving that the war is unwinnable?

And is there any sign that those tactical aspects Putin cares about or are getting to Putin?

It’s worse than it’s unwinnable.

It’s that the war is starting to attire Russia and people see the damage.

But psychologically, yes.

Schifrin: At least challenging.

Ostrovsky: It’s challenging.

The effect the Ukrainian drones are having on Russia’s refining capacity, for example, we don’t know the exact figures, but my understanding it runs to about 15 to 20%.

That’s a modest estimate of Russia’s refining capacity.

Russia now has a ban on exports of refined products of petrol.

That’s a significant damage.

Ukraine can now do, in a way, more damage economically to Russia than Russia can do to Ukraine, simply because Russia has already done all it could.

At the moment, let’s say 1,000 drones are flying, attacking Russia.

Within months, it’ll be 3,000.

The damage is significant.

What this actually means, if Putin can’t, in his thinking, if he can’t respond symmetrically by hitting anything in Ukraine that would cause similar damage and would work, therefore, as a deterrent in Ukraine, but he does need to respond, the place where he might be looking to respond is Europe, because Ukraine is completely dependent on European financing and on weapons.

And there’s certainly some US officials, certainly European officials I talked to, who do believe that one option here is escalation.

Yes, it’s a real possibility.

My fear is that it’s not just a possibility in Ukraine, it’s a possibility in Europe.

Russia is a nuclear power, so... That leads us... It’s always going to be at the back of everybody’s mind.

But that’s why the elites are also starting to question what’s going on here.

Escalation is a real risk.

I think this is what most people I talk to, the Russian lead, actually kind of expect.

Let me highlight something that you recently highlighted, the May 9th parade, that really goes to the vulnerability, I think, almost embarrassment, I would say, for some of Putin’s leadership.

I have attended this parade.

It’s almost like a state religion, the celebration of the Soviet victory in World War II over Nazi Germany and how Putin connects it to the fight in Ukraine.

But this year, for the first time in decades, no tanks rumbling through Red Square.

For fear of Ukrainian attack, the Internet was shut off ahead of time.

And as you wrote... [Reading] And so how vulnerable, how weak do people think it is?

The vulnerability, I think, is the political vulnerability and economic vulnerability and showing in his ratings as well.

But yes, this parade is one of the staples of whole Putin’s ideology, which is built around the victory in the Second World War.

In all these years, Russia has not produced a more powerful ideological tenant, if you like, than the Soviet victory.

Everything done in the name of that Soviet victory in the Second World War, all other wars, a continuation of that.

The fact that Russia is, you know, Putin had to not cancel the parade, but really scale it down.

And Zelenskyy had to release the letter saying... Ostrovsky: I don’t think that was the, yeah, it was... Schifrin: Little trolling.

Ostrovsky: Yeah, it was a little trolling, which comes with the cost, because then he gets infuriated, then he hits Ukraine with, well, Kiev with what he’s got, kind of inevitable, in a way.

So no, it is significant.

And the, I would say there is one other development, which is that, to your previous question, the elite by now has completely embraced the idea that this is not Russia’s war against Ukraine, that this is part of a... Ukraine is just one front.

This is Russia’s confrontation.

This is Russia’s fight with the West.

And therefore, the logic of escalation goes, sort of points, not necessarily in the direction of Ukraine.

So we are, I think... Schifrin: In a dangerous moment.

I think we’re in a dangerous moment.

I think Putin’s initial response will be to escalate rather than back off.

And that’s what we’ve seen now, when Zelenskyy written this letter to Putin, and then made it public two weeks later, because Putin hasn’t responded.

Putin says, "Not time to talk."

So he thinks he can still achieve something.

At the same time, we’re saying he thinks that the war might end, but we don’t know how.

It could be through escalation.

Schifrin: Yeah.

Ostrovsky: I think escalation is a real possibility.

It’s not coming to an end because he’s just suddenly, I think, is going to stop.

And there is also the question, who do you negotiate with?

Negotiating with Zelenskyy is going to be very difficult.

Schifrin: Yeah.

Ostrovsky: For obvious reasons.

Also, the elite actually is sort of looking at Putin’s decision saying, "Hang on a second, you had this opportunity with Trump."

Well, we kind of wasted this opportunity.

We could have used it for just talking.

And because it wasn’t real negotiations, it was the purpose of us to get Trump to put pressure on Ukraine so Ukraine would give Russia what Putin wanted without Russia having to fight.

That didn’t work out.

And it’s not clear who you negotiate with in Europe.

But translating discontent into political change in Russia is very difficult, perhaps impossible, not impossible.

We’ve seen it in history.

But it is very, very difficult.

The loyalists are divided from each other.

Many of them still benefit, I would argue, from the situation.

So a lot of Russia watchers I talk to say, "Well, fine.

All right, smart guy," you point out all the weaknesses, But that doesn’t mean that the czar suddenly loses power.

No, this is a million dollar question.

The czar loses power when he loses the war.

Schifrin: Right.

The legitimacy of the czar is based in victory.

The absence of results, the absence of that victory in this particular war kind of equals defeat.

Schifrin: Right.

Not the next day, because the next day, let’s say there is a ceasefire, there’ll be huge relief.

But the question will be asked by those who are saying, "Okay, you’ve started this war "to restore Russia’s imperial greatness.

"What have you achieved?"

And right now there’s no narrative for him to say, "I’ve got this, I’ve got this.

"There’s no Donbass.

"Zelenskyy’s not gone."

Remember, the war has been reframed as the war against the West.

He could say, "I’ve stopped the Western violence.

"I’ve stopped Europe.

"I’ve deterred Europe with whatever escalation.

"Russia survived."

That’s not going to get him after a while much further, because again, the question is what comes after.

But Nick, this is a million dollar question.

How does this translate into change?

We don’t know, but that doesn’t mean it won’t.

I mean, and this can last, by the way, for some time.

What this official described and what I agree with is that... In the formal official in the Russian government.

Which is what he ended his article with, is that Russia is now, Putin, the regime is in this situation of zugzwang, which in chess means that every next move makes things worse.

You could put it differently, the pursuit of power, which is what the pursuit of preservation, pursuit of expansion of power undermines that power.

Every next step actually makes it worse.

At what point, how it breaks, nobody knows.

Is it a black swan moment?

Is it a collapse of the front line?

Something happens, we simply don’t know.

But the dynamic is there.

And Putin’s ratings matter, because ratings signal to parts of the elite that Putin has support.

Schifrin: Right.

That’s this question of legitimacy, always very difficult.

And I think they’re watching it very closely, and people are starting to make moves.

Because the ratings are relatively low, we shouldn’t necessarily trust the actual... Yeah, there’s a rocket sky, the high sky by Western standards, they’re way above 50%.

But in this kind of regimes, it’s the trend that matters, it’s the dynamic that matters.

And the dynamic and the trend is a downward trend.

Yeah.

Going beyond today, just in a hypothetical, just because it’s interesting, if Putin were not to be there, is there anyone who is obviously in line to replace him?

And do we have any idea how that process would play out?

It depends on how it goes.

It depends on how it goes and when it goes.

Schifrin: Yeah.

Constitution, it’s Russian Prime Minister who takes over.

What happens the day after, how that fight evolves.

It will obviously involve people with access to the guns, but it will be the Praetorian Guards, it will be the FSB.

So it will be whether the army, at what point the army gets involved.

I think it will be decided inside the elites.

How it happens, we don’t know.

There could be a period of chaos, as I said, depending on how and when it goes.

Schifrin: Arkady Ostrovsky, thank you very much.

Really appreciate it.

Thank you for having me.

And that’s all the time we have.

Join us again here next week on "Compass Points."

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Upholding freedom by strengthening democracies at home and abroad.

Additional support is provided by Friends of the News Hour.

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