It started with one viral influencer complaining about Russia’s economy. Now a record 60% of Russians are pessimistic about their country’s outlook

Summary

Overnight, Victoria Bonya went from being a Russian influencer known for exercise routines and cosmetic endorsements into a catalyst for widespread public discontent about the state of her home country’s society and economy. Bonya, a former television presenter in Russia who now makes a living as an influencer in Monaco, enjoyed the sort of virality most activists and politicians can only dream of in April, when she uploaded a screed critiquing Vladimir Putin’s handling of the Russian economy. The 18-minute video , posted to Instagram, has received around 32 million views and 1.7 million likes. Bonya’s laundry list of grievances attacked everything from the government’s failed response to extreme flooding in southern Russia earlier this year, to rising inflation and taxes hurting households. The widely viewed and reshared video included a direct message to Putin: “You know what the risk is?” Bonya asked in the video. “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.” While Russians have yet to air their disapproval of the status quo in a Bolshevik-style rebellion (which some Kremlin leaders cautioned to be a real possibility in the turbulent weeks after Bonya’s video went viral), the country’s economy is starting to show strain at the most basic level: its people. Russians might be famous for their pessimism. Russia has been able to weather Western sanctions largely by ramping up trade with non-aligned countries, particularly India and China. The new taxes have weighed on employment and forced small businesses to shut down . High oil prices due to the standoff in the Strait of Hormuz granted Putin a temporary reprieve , but a labor shortage and constrained manufacturing capacity have complicated the Kremlin’s hopes of funneling more money into its defense sector. “The fundamental constraint facing Russia today is not access to money but access to people, technology, and productive capacity,” Matthew Klein, an economist and co-author of the Kiel Institute’s analysis, wrote in the report. “The government can mobilize additional financial resources, but with labor shortages at record levels and sanctions restricting access to critical imports, higher spending increasingly risks generating inflation rather than greater military output,” he added. When asked about their employment prospects, 58% of respondents said it was a bad time to find a job, the highest rate since 2021, when Russian employment was still recovering from the pandemic.