Putin doesn't hear us, say even active supporters of the war against Ukraine. And he brilliantly confirms their hypothesis, calling for knitting socks for the front, Ivan Preobrazhensky noted.
At a forum called "Small Motherland - the Strength of Russia" Vladimir Putin called on Russians to work in the rear for the front, as during World War II. According to the Russian dictator, victory was achieved then also thanks to the grandmothers and children who knitted socks for the front.
However, such a comparison will rather remind many Russians that the current war has been going on longer than the so-called. Great Patriotic War and that if anything brings them together, it is the great fatigue in society.
Warm socks for victory
Vladimir Putin is not the first time speaking in the spirit of children's propaganda - his story about warm socks for the front, which supposedly distinguished the Soviet Union from Nazi Germany, resembles the fairy tales for children from Soviet times and is just as far from the complex military reality. Socks were knitted not only by Soviet citizens - in Nazi Germany there was also a program for voluntary assistance to the front, but fortunately these "warm socks" did not help Hitler to win.
However, Putin is clearly not satisfied with the existing voluntary assistance from that part of Russian society that supports the war or the so-called "our boys" - in recent weeks he has actively demanded that everyone take a more active part in the aggression against Ukraine. Putin has asked for "voluntarily" to raise funds for the war from big business, supported the increase in taxes for small and medium-sized businesses, and students across Russia are increasingly learning to assemble drones in "free time" or at the expense of school hours. Until now, it has come to this general appeal in the style of: "Everything for the front, everything for victory".
At the same time, Putin seems to ignore the fact that his appeal comes at a time when sociological surveys report a significant drop in his rating - even those conducted by Kremlin services such as VTsIOM, and at the same time, the share of those who want the war to end has reached record high levels. And last but not least: calls to "tell the president" abound on social networks how tired and dissatisfied the people are.
The president doesn't want to listen
The speech about socks is just a reflection of the mood of Vladimir Putin, who has decided to ignore the reality that does not correspond to his ideas. He called for all forces to be harnessed to the front literally days after giving clear instructions to the technocrats in the government: not to bother him with complaints about the collapse of the economy, but to give suggestions on how to restore its growth. Everyone is aware that Putin will not pay attention to the demands to end the war. Also, anyone who says this out loud will, at best, be fired.
Putin's inner conviction that he can defeat Ukraine and the Russian economy will regain its former stability has received support these weeks thanks to the sharp rise in fuel prices - as a result of the US and Israel's war against Iran. Sanctions against the Russian oil industry have been partially lifted, and the Americans claim that this has already brought the Russian budget an additional $14 billion. Even if the real amount turns out to be more modest, in any case the universe seems to be whispering to Putin: don't stop, you have a mission.
The clash with reality
It should be clear that most of the money that "fell from the sky" in this situation will not go to support the Russian economy or stimulate growth - it will be spent on the war against Ukraine. And this means an inevitable imminent clash of Putin's virtual world, in which Russian grandmothers knit socks for the front together, and kindergarten children and schoolchildren assemble drones, with the reality in which farmers slaughter livestock, cafes and shops close due to unbearable taxes, and big business is once again trying to transfer as much money as possible to offshore companies. The US war with Iran has simply postponed this moment a bit.
It is no longer possible to solve all problems with money, as was done after 2022. And even the leader of the pseudo-opposition communist party, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, who is extremely loyal to the Kremlin, is threatening from the rostrum of the State Duma with a "revolution" in the country as early as this fall.
Optimists want to hope that the authorities will be forced to give in and begin real peace negotiations with Ukraine. But pessimists see something else - how repression is intensifying. Such a sign is, for example, the transfer of pre-trial detention centers to the FSB, in order to make it easier to extract confessions from the "politically unreliable".
I share the position of the pessimists who expect that the authorities will respond to the discontent not with peace, but with war - but against internal enemies, and not so much the conventional "foreign agents" as ordinary Russians who are not ready to knit socks on an empty stomach.
This text expresses the opinion of the author and may not coincide with the positions of the Bulgarian editorial office and the State News Agency as a whole.