In the Information Age, it's not unlikely for resistance to come from the unlikeliest sources. Take Victoria Bonya, for instance, the 46-year-old Internet personality grew up in a remote Siberian town most Russians have never heard of.
She moved to Moscow at 16, and made a mark on reality TV. Today, she's based out of Monaco; she's famous for her luxury content and runs a hat label. She is also one of Russia's most followed women online. But it turns out someone with 13.6 million Instagram followers can be a lot more powerful than what the Kremlin expected.
The Kremlin is dealing with the backlash from a viral video in which celebrity blogger Victoria Bonya criticises Russian authorities, as Vladimir Putin sees his approval ratings fall for the sixth week in a row.
Bonya first gained fame in 2006 on the reality show Dom-2, which is similar to Big Brother. Recently, she shared a video cautioning the Russian president that a growing list of issues could quickly escalate beyond control.
“The people are afraid of you, artists are afraid, governors are afraid,” she said, in the 18-minute video on Instagram, which has garnered more than 26 million views in less than a week.
She listed a series of problems that, she argued, no regional governor would risk bringing up directly with Vladimir Putin, including flooding in Dagestan, oil contamination along the Black Sea coast, livestock culls in Siberia, internet outages, and mounting pressure on small businesses from rising costs and taxes.
Moscow on Thursday took the unusual step of publicly recognising the sharp criticism, and said efforts were already under way to tackle the issues highlighted by Victoria Bonya.
Since Bonya avoided directly criticising Vladimir Putin or the war in Ukraine, this has fuelled speculation that the video may have been staged by Russian authorities, to signal that public concerns are being acknowledged ahead of parliamentary elections later this year.
“You know what the risk is?” asked Bonya. “That people will stop being afraid, and they’re being squeezed into a coiled spring, and that one day that coiled spring will shoot out.”
Victoria Bonya’s post has also encouraged others to speak up, including lifestyle and beauty influencer Aiza Anokhina, who backed her message and warned that restrictions on Telegram would deal a “huge blow to the Russian economy.” She also pointed to high taxes and inequality as key issues affecting the public.
“How much money do you need to steal so that it’s enough?” Aiza said, adding that “the average MP who owns property worth billions, millions of dollars and holds multiple [foreign] passports”.
The Kremlin’s shutdown of mobile internet, the effective ban on the widely used Telegram, and the push toward a state-backed “national messenger” all justified on security grounds, have sparked rare calls for protests and a wave of public mockery directed at authorities.
This unrest comes amid a struggling economy, strained by four years of war with Ukraine and rising prices. On Wednesday, Vladimir Putin acknowledged two months of economic contraction, pressing officials to explain why performance was falling short of expectations.
Meanwhile, Russia’s state pollster VCIOM reported last week that Putin’s approval rating had dipped below 70% for the first time since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022. By Friday, the figure had slipped further to 66.7%.
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