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And now for the main event…

All is not well in Vladimir Putin’s kingdom. If you’re not obsessed with the place, then chances are the latest news you’ve heard was that Russia was winning on the Ukrainian battlefield and profiting from the high oil prices and temporary sanctions relief unleashed by Donald Trump’s war against Iran. But that isn’t quite true. In reality, Russia is in deep, deep trouble.

The Russian military has lost what little battlefield momentum it had—and even that was greatly exaggerated by the Kremlin. Meanwhile, Ukrainian drone attacks on Russia—which Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has taken to calling “long range sanctions”—are up significantly, pounding luxury apartment buildings in Moscow and hitting Russian energy infrastructure so hard that 30 percent of Russia’s gasoline and 25 percent of diesel production have been either severely damaged or taken offline. There are reported gasoline shortages in some cities, and Russia has paused gasoline exports until August as a result. Prices for everything, including food and medicine, have skyrocketed due to new taxes to pay for the war that went into effect in January. Social media is filled with videos of outraged Russians complaining about suddenly unaffordable groceries—but not for long. In the spring, the Kremlin began experimenting with rolling internet blackouts, blocking V.P.N.s, and shutting down mobile cell service altogether, producing a massive backlash ahead of September’s parliamentary elections. (Yes, they’re fake, but the Kremlin puts incredible stock in them and in the simulacrum of a parliament they produce.)

Once again, there is talk of collapse—of the Russian economy, the Russian war effort, Putin’s power. But we’ve seen this movie before: Putin on the brink of losing it all, only to be saved by yet another deus ex machina stroke of luck. So what, exactly, is going on? And what should we expect? To find out, I called my good friend Mikhail Zygar, a legendary Russian reporter and writer, and author of the recent book Dark Side of the Earth and the must-read Last Pioneer, on Substack. (Misha is also a fearsome criminal: In 2025, he was sentenced in absentia to eight and a half years in prison for daring to speak about Russian war crimes in Bucha, Ukraine.) Misha has incredible sources inside the Russian elite, so I wanted to know: What was he hearing? Is the regime really on the verge of collapse—again?

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I hope you find our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, as interesting as I did.

Julia Ioffe: What’s happening in Russia? Is the Kremlin worried?

Mikhail Zygar: For the last four years, the Russian population was successfully trying to pretend that the war is not happening. But for the first time since the beginning, it’s obvious that everyone is really freaking out, because for the first time people are affected. And that’s not about war, it’s not about drone attacks, that’s about the internet being shut off.

Is it really the first time, though? Because remember the mobilization in September 2022? People really freaked out then, too, because the war affected them directly.

Yes, mobilization was a real thing. And also when the war started. And then there was Evgeny Prigozhin’s uprising, in June 2023—these were moments when everyone started talking about politics as if a collapse was possible, and then it all suddenly stopped. Now it’s really a thing, because the internet is the air people breathe. Cutting it off is a huge shock. The population is really unhappy, and that’s why people in the Kremlin, especially in the presidential administration, understand that something needs to be done, especially because of the parliamentary election this September. Everyone knows that an election in Russia is not a real election, but, still, there is a high risk of turbulence, so the situation is very different from last year, and economically it’s becoming worse and worse.

What is the real economic situation in Russia right now? Do we know?

It was clear by the beginning of February that a lot of companies were on the verge of bankruptcy—even big businesses just cannot work in this environment of high inflation. They’re overloaded with debts, with new taxes. The Ukrainian drone attacks hurt the Russian economy quite a lot—the oil refinery in Tuapse was 15 percent of Russian oil exports. It has stopped working. All the barrels are destroyed. There is an oil spill in the Black Sea.

Is the average Russian connecting the dots that all this is because of the war?

The most popular phrase everyone is repeating is vse vsyo ponimayut: Everyone understands everything. Probably the only part of propaganda that works is that people are becoming more anti-Western, because they started believing that the West really hates us. But that doesn’t mean that they are not blaming the Russian government. They understand that the reason for everything is the war. They understand that it was Putin who started the war. They understand that if Russia loses the war, it’s going to be even worse—but it’s impossible to win. Most people definitely want the war to be over.

My usual method to check the temperature is checking the box office. It’s impossible to fake those numbers. For more than four years, the only genre that is popular in Russia is the fairy tale. People are not watching patriotic dramas. They are watching childish fairy tales as if they are hiding, trying to escape from reality.

What about the business community, the people close to the Kremlin, or in the Kremlin? What are you hearing from them?

It’s like they are waiting for some kind of collapse. I’ve been hearing a lot that the government is running out of money—and that’s crucial, because money is the only resource for the government to maintain the system. Everyone has to be paid: the bureaucracy, the army, the F.S.B., the judges, the prison system. It’s a 100 percent capitalist state; it doesn’t have any ideology. No one works for the idea. No one believes in anything. The moment the system runs out of money, it stops. And it’s going to happen. Probably not this summer, probably not before the September election. But maybe early next year. It’s really coming. I was really surprised by the changed attitude of so many of my sources because for many years, I was sure that everything was so stable.

The Russian economy seemed like it was hurtling toward collapse in February—and then Trump started the war against Iran, oil prices shot up, and suddenly it seemed the Kremlin might be able to patch over its budget deficit. Every time we think this is the end, something happens, and Putin is able to hold on for another year, and then something else happens, he holds on another year—and so on, for 26 years. So is this really going to be any different?

We cannot predict it. He’s not a strategic player, he is a tactician. He had plan A for his invasion: to take Kyiv within three days. He didn’t have a plan B. He hasn’t changed anything since the beginning of the war. He thinks that time is on his side, and he was right a number of times. His situation was bad before Trump won the elections; that helped him. His situation was bad before Trump started the war with Iran, and that helped him. But he still doesn’t have any plan. And he doesn’t plan to start another war, which was a serious discussion last year—

A new war where? Against Europe? NATO?

There was speculation that there were plans about Estonia, for example. Clearly, NATO is not going to start World War III because of a village in Eastern Estonia. But recently, Putin’s focus moved elsewhere. From his point of view, his economic problems are temporary. He thinks, yes, there are troubles in Russia, but that’s not a reason to start real negotiations about Ukraine. Trump is, according to him, a lame duck, and, probably, he’s going to be even weaker after the midterms. There is no reason to talk to an administration that is going to leave. He is always very skeptical about every American administration, because he knows that they cannot promise you anything. They, all of them, are temporary. There is no sense in making any concessions to Americans, because it means nothing for the next administration.

Has his view of Trump changed since Trump’s first term?

I’ll quote you a phrase I’ve heard from one of my sources, and he was quoting Yuri Kovalchuk, one of Putin’s closest allies: “The ‘orange one’ is such a great guy, we must make a golden statue to him—and if we’re lucky, we’ll make it in Kyiv.”

So they still think Trump is going to help them take Ukraine?

Not willingly. It’s just that everything they love, Trump does. Chaos has been their strategy for many years, and they see the situation in the world becoming more chaotic, and they clearly love it. They love the high oil prices, and the lifting of sanctions after the beginning of the war in Iran, and there are no more rules, and the European Union is in turmoil, so it’s great. They definitely do not consider him to be their asset, but he’s unpredictable, and they love this level of unpredictability.

What do we know of Putin’s thinking about this moment? Does he feel the boiling discontent?

I think he’s thinking that it’s all fine, because everything he hears is everything he wants to hear. No one says anything he would dislike. He seems to be very religious, for example, because all the elders from the ancient monasteries, or all the metropolitans and patriarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church, claim that he’s a God-chosen leader, and that Saint Seraphim of Sarov predicted his great victory, that everyone is praying for his health, and God is speaking through his mouth. Minister of Defense Andrei Belousov is a very religious person who says that the Virgin Mary speaks through Putin.

It reminds me of Emperor Nicholas II. He really believed in all those prophets who were feeding him the information he really wanted to hear. That’s more or less what is happening to Putin. He is surrounded by people who are persuading him that he is doomed to win, and that’s the source of his strength. It’s why he never hesitates.

And we all know what happened to Nicholas II. I’ve always wondered about this religiosity of Putin’s, though, because it wasn’t always there. Does he now believe in God because he’s been told that God believes in him, or is it the reverse? Like, how did a K.G.B. officer become so deeply Christian?

The Russian Orthodox Church was destroyed during Stalin’s Great Terror. When Stalin decided to re-create the Church [during World War II], he assigned that to the K.G.B., so, basically, the current Russian Orthodox Church was created by the K.G.B. This is not an unnatural alliance. But yes, it’s so nice to start believing when they tell you that you are God’s chosen leader, when you believe in a God that believes in you.

When I was a reporter in Moscow, my then-boss, David Remnick, came to town and wrote this beautiful story about how no one’s going to protest and nothing is going to change. And we all agreed with him. It came out in late November or early December 2011—and then, literally, just a few days later, Moscow and many other cities erupted in protest. Do you think this is that kind of moment, where there’s all this activity and ferment under the surface that at some point is just going to explode?

It’s really hard to make those predictions, especially when you’re not in Moscow, so I’m trying to rely on the intuition of people who live in Moscow. Some of them expect it, some of them say that the level of turbulence is very unusual. But as you rightly say, the last time when we saw revolutionary events happening in Russia, it was out of the blue. So, probably, when we feel it, it’s not only us who feel it. Probably, people in the Kremlin are aware. Putin is not aware, but it’s not his job. He’s obsessed with the war, and he does nothing except the war, but people in the Kremlin must do something, especially ahead of the parliamentary elections, which is why they are creating puppet politicians, trying to manage discontent, etcetera.

I know it’s a crazy question to ask about Russia, but what are your short-term and long-term prognoses?

I do not believe in any mysticism or in cycles of history, but we know that August is the month when something usually happens in contemporary Russian history. This year, August comes right before the parliamentary elections. It could be potentially turbulent. As for the long term, it’s funny, but you might remember that last year, Alla Pugacheva, an iconic Russian pop diva, gave a long interview, and she predicted that everything would change in 2027. You cannot imagine how many times I’ve heard during the last months different people quoting her. Everyone is thinking about 2027 as the turning point. Everyone is expecting that if something happens, it’s gonna happen next year.

That’s all from me, friends. I’ll see you back here later this week. Until then, good night. Tomorrow will be worse.

Julia

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