MOSCOW  –   “Vladimir Vladimirovich, people are afraid of you.” Those were the opening words of an Instagram post addressed to President Vladimir Putin by Russian beauty influencer Victoria Bonya, known for her make-up tips and lifestyle content. “The people are afraid of you, bloggers are afraid of you, artists are afraid of you, governors are afraid of you. And you are the president of our country,” she continued. In a direct appeal to Putin, who she says she supports – Bonya lists a wide range of ills in Russia. These include an alleged slow response to floods in Dagestan, claims the government brutally mismanaged recent livestock culls in Siberia and the intensifying restrictions on online social networks. This last, she alleged in Tuesday’s post, is preventing people from communicating with loved ones. “There’s a feeling that we’re no longer living in a free country,” she said.  By Friday afternoon, Bonya, who now lives in Monaco and has her own cosmetics line, had racked up 26 million views on her Instagram video, and more than 75,000 comments, many applauding her bravery. Another popular Russian lifestyle and beauty influencer, who goes by Aiza and also lives abroad, took to her Instagram account to support Bonya, claiming the latest restrictions on the Telegram messaging platform would be a “huge hit to the Russian economy” and adding other grievances including high taxes and inequality. “How much money do you need to steal so that it’s enough?” she asked, citing “the average MP who owns property worth billions, millions of dollars and holds multiple (foreign) passports.” She later deleted the video. The public pushback on the Kremlin come as several recent polls show sagging support for Putin, who has instituted internet crackdowns as he continues his yearslong push against Ukraine at a time of increased economic hardship at home for most Russians, including his supporters.

“It seems that something is shifting,” said Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of the political analysis firm R.Politik. Even in a society so accustomed to wartime restrictions and economic hardships, she told CNN, the mobile internet outages and Telegram crackdown of recent weeks were “something more resembling a pivotal moment.” Internet restrictions in Russia have escalated since early spring, taking the country’s already tightly controlled information space into uncharted territory. Rolling mobile internet outages that upended daily life, including in Russia’s biggest cities, Moscow and St. Petersburg, coincided with the throttling of Telegram and new crackdowns on VPNs, used widely in Russia to circumvent existing restrictions on internet access. Public officials have claimed the mobile internet blackouts are part of a security effort to counter “increasingly sophisticated methods” of Ukrainian attack, with the Kremlin promising that, “as soon as this measure is no longer deemed necessary, internet service will be fully restored to normal.” The Telegram restrictions have been particularly damaging for online influencers, who had already lost any income they might have earned on Instagram after a law came into force in September banning Russian residents from advertising on websites Russia blocked or deemed “undesirable.” Instagram was officially blocked in 2022 but is still widely accessed via VPNs.