Russia and Ukraine

[Thumpalumpacus]

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Videos Show Russian Youths Chant Anti-War Song in St. Petersburg

A crowd of people gathering in St. Petersburg sang an anti-war song by a Russian musician deemed a “foreign agent” in a video that has gone viral.  

The clips widely circulated on Telegram showed the group singing the song “Cooperative Swan Lake” by Noize MC, whose lyrics condemn the authorities, the population’s silence in the war in Ukraine and Kremlin propaganda justifying President Vladimir Putin’s aggression.

It was reported that the person leading the sing-along was arrested, and ultra-nationalist Russians have expressed anger at the scenes.

Why It Matters
Since Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia has faced a clampdown on freedoms, where public opposition to the war and the government is in effect banned.  

Thus, gathering people to sing a song by a prominent anti-government musician is a significant expression of anger at the country’s authorities, carrying considerable risk.  

https://www.newsweek.com/videos-russian-...g-10883035

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Army corruption and mass death are breeding new dissent—deep inside Vladimir Putin’s loyal core

Among Russians who follow their country’s war in Ukraine, it’s difficult to overstate the lasting, demoralizing impact of the story of Ernest and Goodwin, the call signs of two experienced Russian drone pilots in Ukraine. In September 2024, after they exposed their commander’s corruption, they were sent to the front on a so-called nullification mission—the Russian army’s euphemism for a guaranteed suicide attack. Their deaths in Ukraine ignited public outrage on pro-war Telegram channels, forcing even the Kremlin to publicly address the issue. Col. Igor Puzik, the corrupt commander who sent the drone pilots to their deaths, is still in charge of his regiment and is regularly praised on state TV. Among contract soldiers, puzikovschina has become a grim neologism for a Russian command structure riddled with impunity, incompetence, and lethal betrayal; a warning that merit and loyalty no longer protect you from being used, abused, and even killed for a superior’s corruption and other ambitions.

Puzikovschina now signifies a systemic collapse of trust between the military’s leaders and its rank and file. The problem is no longer limited to isolated cases; it is endemic. Whole regiments function as private fiefdoms, with officers siphoning off supplies, selling fuel meant for troops, and responding to complaints by sending the complainers on nullification missions at the front. On his Telegram channel, a mobilized soldier with the username Vault 8 described thousands of contract soldiers who were promised one-year contracts by their recruiters, only to have their service indefinitely extended. Experienced submarine crews and intercontinental ballistic missile operators have found themselves forced into assault infantry, regardless of skills or medical conditions, because they are more valuable to the Russian General Staff as cannon fodder than as specialists.

Among ordinary contract soldiers and mobilized recruits, there is now almost universal contempt for military generals, many of whom have become infamous for nepotism, gross incompetence, and indifference toward appalling loss of life at the front. Gen. Aleksandr Lapin became the symbol of this rift after awarding a medal to his own son at the front while Russian troops under the father’s command were retreating in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region in 2022, a gesture now remembered as emblematic of the high command’s obliviousness. Col. Gen. Rustam Muradov’s endless offensives near the Ukrainian town of Vuhledar—which the Russians first attacked in January 2023 and needed almost two years to take—led to mass casualties among Russian soldiers and made his name synonymous with abject failure and disregard for human life. Stories about these generals circulate widely in the trenches and on social media, corroding the basic bond of trust and subordination between ordinary soldiers and those who command them.

Dissent now comes not just from the cowered, passive remnants of Russia’s liberal circles but from millions of soldiers, their families, and even patriotic pro-war bloggers. War propaganda, police control, and the flood of money paid to soldiers and their families have not bought social peace. Protest movements like The Way Home, led by wives and widows of mobilized soldiers, persistently picket the Ministry of Defense, despite being harassed by police as alleged “foreign agents.” Families of missing soldiers face threats for insisting on finding out their fate; some commanders have reportedly threatened to “nullify” soldiers whose relatives speak out. Survivors of the first mobilization in 2022, stuck on the front for years without a break, openly discuss their desire for retribution against their own officers as soon as the war ends one way or another. Even hyperpatriotic state journalists and war correspondents, such as Roman Saponkov, warn that unless Puzik and other notorious commanders are held accountable, mobilization will fail and public confidence in recruiting will never recover.

The Kremlin’s machinery of repression—selectively jailing the loudest critics, branding dissenters as “foreign agents,” and encouraging state media to attack “traitors”—can no longer keep up with the scale and breadth of anger. Crackdowns on straight-talking critics of Putin’s prosecution of the war—including the death of Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, the jailing of war veteran Igor Girkin, and the branding of war blogger Roman Alekhin and pro-Kremlin political commentator Sergei Markov as “foreign agents”—were meant as warnings that invisible red lines are not to be crossed. But this strategy falls flat when discontent is no longer led by a handful of public figures and has spread to millions of soldiers, as well as their families  and friends, whose personal experiences contradict the official narrative.

Meanwhile, the war’s economic consequences are so severe that even the talk shows on state TV openly discuss price hikes, shortages, and public frustration. Wartime inflation in Russia stands at almost 9 percent, with central bank interest rates at 17 percent. Gasoline shortages, worsened every day by Ukrainian drone strikes on oil refineries, fuel depots, and pumping stations, have forced rationing and driven prices up across the country. Komsomolskaya Pravda, allegedly Putin’s favorite newspaper, now posts video debates on inflation, supply disruptions, and the surging price of food and utilities, which would have been taboo to mention just two years ago. What was previously easier to manage on a local basis—protests against wage arrears or state-sanctioned environmental disasters—has erupted into a nationwide political headache, harming not just the poor or the opposition-minded, but broad swaths of ordinary Russians who no longer believe the Kremlin’s triumphalism.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/10/09/rus...n-protest/

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