Vladimir Putin, like other dictators, has his own television news programs, writes the French "Mond", adding that the crews of the official channel Russia 1 stay at their workplace every evening, after the 20 p.m. broadcast, and re-edit the reports to create a carefully filtered version, cleaned of any news that could anger the Russian president.
The system was described in an interview with the Moscow Times by Dmitry Skorobutov, the channel's former evening news editor who has been living in exile in Europe since 2020, saying that the practice was introduced in 2011, during the height of Russian protests against election fraud. The system, according to Skorobutov, was intensified after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, to the point that Putin is now "completely cut off from the reality on the front lines."
Isolated in this carefully arranged information bubble, the Russian president constantly claims that his army in Ukraine is advancing “every day in all directions,” writes “Mond,” recalling that on June 4 he boasted of occupying “around 2.440 square kilometers” – a figure that clearly has no connection to reality. The French newspaper recalls that, according to an analysis by the American Institute for the Study of War, Russian forces lost territory in May, for the second month in a row, and adds that even the regime’s most ardent supporters admit that Moscow is unlikely to succeed in breaking through the lines. “A war of attrition without a definite end is not in Russia’s interests,” wrote Dmitry Trenin, a former colonel in the Soviet military intelligence services turned political scientist, in an article published on RT’s website on May 28.
The front lines are static, the civilian economy is collapsing, and refineries across the country are being targeted by drone attacks. Yet Putin seems to be focusing his attention on something else: his communications. In a video released on May 11, he is seen in jeans and a jacket personally driving his armored Aurus limousine to the entrance of the Arbat Hotel in the heart of Moscow. Waiting for him inside was Vera Dmitrievna Gurevich, his former teacher and retired senior police officer, 92, with whom he has remained in touch. This time, he has come to take her to lunch at the Kremlin.
The scene, according to Le Monde, was filmed to look like a spontaneous meeting between Putin and his teacher. But one detail stood out: a man suddenly appeared, cheerfully introducing himself as “a tourist who came by car from Sochi.” The president briefly questioned him. “Do you like Moscow?” “Yes, of course, we come every year,” he replied, and his wife soon joined him: “We love Moscow.” Presented as “undirected,” the video, according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, was intended to illustrate “the joy of simple human interaction” that the president supposedly cherishes.
The move may have been intended to divert attention from the unpleasant revelation, the French newspaper said, noting that a few days earlier, a report attributed to a European intelligence service, without further details, had painted the Russian president in a very different light. According to the document, Putin is allegedly obsessed with his own security, fearing that he could be overthrown by his closest associates or even assassinated. This fear has reportedly led him to significantly increase his security. He reportedly spends most of his time locked up in specially equipped “bunkers” in each of his many residences.
The footage taken at the Arbat Hotel was almost flawless - except for one detail, which was pointed out by Agentstvo, a Russian opposition investigative media outlet in exile. The supposed tourist was not a tourist at all. The cheerful, bearded man in a tracksuit who casually approached Putin was Aleksandr Bazarny.
Bazarny, a former member of the security service, works for the company in charge of the presidential chalet in Krasnaya Polyana, a ski resort near Sochi that is popular with the elite. He also worked for a management company linked to Gazprom, the Russian gas giant. Known to the FSO, the service responsible for protecting high-ranking officials, he was chosen for the role. Nothing was left to chance, as the Arbat Hotel, located near the Kremlin, also belongs to the presidential administration, making it easier to secure, opposition media outlets have pointed out.
Carefully staged “spontaneous encounters”
Walks among citizens and spontaneous encounters have long been replaced by carefully staged events in which members of the security services play the role of ordinary citizens. “As absurd as these scenes may seem to a Western audience or to younger Russians who have grown up with the Internet, they have an effect on the older electorate,” Tatyana Kastuyeva-Jean, director of the Center for Research on Russia and Eurasia at the French Institute of International Relations, told Le Monde. She added that “in an authoritarian regime, the goal is to show that everything is under control. The president is the embodiment of unshakable power that no one can question.”
Although no one dares to openly oppose him, many mock him on social media. Nicknamed “Grandpa in the Bunker,” the president increasingly resembles the aging members of the Soviet Politburo, who were applauded by the crowds on Red Square while people mocked them in the privacy of their homes for speeches that were completely disconnected from reality.
By the early 1980s, ordinary Soviet citizens had already stopped believing in the official ideology. They pretended to believe, either out of conformity or caution. By the end of Leonid Brezhnev’s rule (1964–1982), communist dogma had become devoid of substance. It was a faith without conviction. “Has lying disappeared in post-Soviet Russia? No, it seems to have become even deeper and more intricate,” writes historian Alain Bezancon in his book Sainte Russie.
Today, that gap still exists. “The ideology that Putin promotes is not convincing. Most Russians do not accept either ‘traditional values’ or anti-Western sentiments,” Vera Granceva, a lecturer at the Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po), told Le Monde. “You only have to look at where rich Russians send their children to school - not to India or Brazil, but to Europe or Dubai. The gap between words and reality shows that this ideology cannot survive.”
Grantseva, an expert on Russian politics, believes that Putin represents the archetype of Homo Sovieticus. The Soviet Union is his alpha and omega. In a 2005 speech, he described the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.”
His entire life trajectory is rooted in that legacy. Shaped by the Soviet system, he spent much of his adult life in the KGB, the political police. First, he tracked dissidents in his native Leningrad, and then was sent to Dresden, in what was then East Germany, where he worked closely with the Stasi.
After coming to power in March 2000, he quickly began restoring some symbols from the Soviet era. The Soviet anthem was reintroduced, while the KGB, now called the FSB, further consolidated its control over the country. “Today, Soviet methods have returned. Since 2012, for example, the politruks — FSB commissars — have been reactivated in every institution,” said Grantseva, who worked in Russia in the 2010s. “The FSB then deployed its agents everywhere, following the logic of a ‘state within a state.’”
According to Russian political scientist Stanislav Belkovsky, “Putin has never created common spaces or common projects; he has isolated Russia from the rest of the world behind an iron curtain.” During more than a quarter of a century in power, he has built a system characterized by disregard for “individual rights and property rights,” Belkovsky told Svoboda, a Russian opposition radio station funded by the European Union, on June 5.
In practice, private entrepreneurs are facing increasing pressure. Forced nationalizations have become so numerous that they are difficult to count. Hundreds of small and medium-sized businesses have been seized under various pretexts, causing great concern in business circles. The case of Alexander Galitsky is one of the most recent examples. This 71-year-old pioneer of the Russian computer industry had his property and personal assets seized in May after being accused of “organized extremism.” Neither his ties to the military, for which he designed computer systems for military satellites, nor his closeness to Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin helped him. He left Russia to avoid prison. The situation is clear, Belkovsky believes: “We are returning to the worst version of the Soviet era.”
The USSR, version 2.0, is now clearly visible in the annexed Crimea, where, according to Le Monde, cards are being used again for rationalized fuel purchases, and supermarket shelves are empty. These shortages are the result of massive Ukrainian drone attacks on the land corridor connecting Crimea with Donbass and Russia. The intensity of these attacks has seriously disrupted logistics and depleted Russian air defense ammunition supplies. By persistently striking refineries, fuel depots and supply chains, Kiev has turned Crimea into the Achilles heel of the Russian army, the French newspaper estimates.
These problems are no longer limited to the peninsula. In June, fuel rationing spread across much of Russia, affecting more than half of its regions. At the same time, refined oil production fell below four million barrels per day, the lowest level in more than 20 years, according to Energy Intelligence.
In such circumstances, even the political elite has begun to express concern. “Russia is on the verge of a social explosion,” warned Vyacheslav Markhayev, a Communist Party deputy in the State Duma, the lower house of parliament. In a message posted on his Telegram channel in early June, he called on the government to “present a clear plan for ending the ‘special military operation’” in Ukraine. Another deputy from the same party, Renat Suleymanov, also said it was necessary to “end” the conflict “as soon as possible,” because the Russian economy “will not withstand a protracted war.”
Could Ukraine become Putin's Afghanistan? Le Monde's interlocutors believe that such a comparison should be taken with caution. "In Ukraine, the consequences of the war exceed those in Afghanistan, especially when it comes to human losses," Kastuyeva-Jean reminded. "Russia is now losing more soldiers in Ukraine in just one month than the Soviet Union lost during the entire decade of the war in Afghanistan (1979-1989), where, according to Russian sources, between 15.000 and 26.000 people died."
Nationalist fervor
Unlike the war against the mujahideen, which was fought far from Russian territory, the war in Ukraine is presented as a question of the survival of the state. All energy and resources are directed to the war effort, and this has not yet caused a major wave of discontent. “The high salaries and social benefits awarded to war participants, despite corruption, have changed society’s attitude towards volunteers, whose deaths do not cause excessive anxiety,” said Kastuyeva-Zhan. “The economy is weakening, but it still survives. And today, no leader comparable to Mikhail Gorbachev has emerged to offer a different national vision.”
Nationalist fervor was one of the main drivers of the regime. “Putin used it extensively before it spread like a virus. It worked especially well in 2014, during the annexation of Crimea, which the Kremlin saw as a success,” Grantseva explained. “The population supported it then, seeing it as a kind of revenge that erased the humiliation that had come after the collapse of the USSR.” An additional benefit for the Kremlin was the renewed “distrust of the West, which is suspected of wanting to break up the country.”
But after more than four years of war, that narrative seems to be losing steam. At the International Economic Forum in St. Petersburg, the so-called Russian Davos, held from June 3 to 6, a different, less triumphalist tone than that of the Russian president could be heard. Business leaders spoke about their problems, although they did not directly link them to the war.
Alexei Mordashov, Severstal's main shareholder and one of Russia's richest men, described the situation as tense. "A month ago, our investment portfolio for 2026 was reduced by 24 percent," he said, lamenting the cash shortage at a time when the company remains among the most profitable in the country.
Ignoring the concerns of business people, Putin presented an almost idyllic picture in his speech at the forum. According to him, the economic slowdown was intentional, the fight against inflation was yielding results, and Russia, measured by purchasing power parity, had overtaken all European countries.
Putin's optimism also extended to the course of the war. He assessed that the conquest of the entire Donetsk region, of which Moscow currently controls more than 80 percent, was within reach. "There is no doubt that we will succeed," he insisted. "The same applies to other goals that we will achieve through negotiations - I am thinking primarily of denazification."
In his speech, he made no mention of the Ukrainian drone attacks on oil terminals in St. Petersburg, which occurred just as the forum was underway. Although participants could see columns of black smoke rising above the city, Putin acted as if he had not even noticed them.
Extreme rigidity
He may have ended up believing his own lies, writes “Mond” and points out that Putin is distrustful of the Internet and new communication technologies. The president has never sent an email in his life and does not own a mobile phone. His sources of information are limited to television news programs tailored to his worldview, as well as reports from generals and advisers who carefully avoid contradicting him.
“People around him tell him what he wants to hear,” Grantseva summed up. “He has essentially indoctrinated the people around him, and they in turn indoctrinate him. It’s a vicious circle that no one can escape.”
His extreme rigidity does not bode well at a time when Kiev and its European allies are trying to revive peace talks. Officially, the Kremlin is not opposed to this, but prefers to communicate through Donald Trump. In St. Petersburg, the Russian president reiterated his demands, referring to the alleged agreement reached in Anchorage on August 15, 2025 with the American president.
"Russia accepts the compromises agreed in Anchorage. Ukraine must do the same. After that, the conflict will be resolved naturally and quickly," he said.
According to Moscow, Trump has pledged to pressure Kiev to cede territories in the Donetsk region that are not yet under Russian control. Ukraine has categorically rejected such a scenario.
“You will not take Donetsk this year either,” the Ukrainian president replied in an open letter to the Russian president on June 4. Although he said he was ready to meet with him to discuss a ceasefire, Volodymyr Zelensky made a sharp accusation against the Russian leader, whom he considers solely responsible for the war.
Regardless of the arguments used to justify it - NATO, geopolitics or the Russian language - “this war is your personal choice, a war without a real reason,” the Ukrainian president wrote. “That is how history will remember it.”
In Washington, the assessment is equally harsh. "In the eyes of most observers around the world, and I would say in the eyes of some people within Russia itself, the invasion of Ukraine represents a strategic disaster for Russia," US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in early June.
He assessed that “Russia will not achieve the goals it set for itself on the first day of the war.” However, there are no signs of relenting on the Russian side.
“Putin is a hardliner and I find it hard to imagine him backing down. That would make him look weak and risk being removed by his own inner circle,” Grantseva said. “Further escalation is the only strategy he has.”
See more:
Download the app and follow the news
FOLLOW US ON
