A lot of people ask, honestly: what’s so terrible about a dictatorship?

From the outside, it can look efficient. Orderly. Even calm. You go to work, raise your kids, watch TV, and tell yourself politics doesn’t reach your kitchen.

So what if elections are fake. So what if the same leader never leaves. Life goes on.

And the propagandists help you believe it. They show glossy images: happy families getting keys to new apartments, athletes winning medals, scientists making breakthroughs. A country that looks normal. Sometimes even triumphant.

So who cares about democracy?

Here’s the difference: dictators don’t pursue power to make you prosperous. They pursue power for the privileges it buys—control over resources, the top of the social pyramid, and most importantly, immunity from the law.

But that kind of power is fragile. It only survives if ordinary people can’t challenge it.

So freedom doesn’t vanish in one dramatic moment. It gets dismantled the way a room gets stripped before demolition—quietly, piece by piece, with small “reasonable” restrictions that turn into a new normal.

That’s what losing freedom actually looks like: not one apocalypse day, but a slow removal of your ability to influence the decisions that shape your life.

Today I’m going to walk you through that killing zone—the systematic killing of freedoms in Putin’s Russia, step by step, until people forget they ever had them.

Here’s our roadmap for today:

• Speech Dries Up — how people get trained to police their own words
  
• Internet Kill Switch — how disconnecting becomes a weapon, and self-sabotage
  
• Social Networks Purge — why YouTube scared the Kremlin
  
• Telegram War Nerve — why the army’s favorite tool became a threat
  
• Empty Shelves, Full Stock — what disappears for you, and why it never disappears for them
  
• Ballots Without Choices — political life, but only with state approval
  
• What’s Still Allowed — the “escape hatches” that reveal the whole design
  

Speech Dries Up

Censorship in Russia didn’t arrive like a hostile takeover, turning the country into North Korea overnight. Rather, it crept in and gradually built up like mold.

At first, it’s just a vibe. You feel what you shouldn’t say on television. What jokes will get you “a phone call” from the authorities. Which names make editors suddenly look at the floor.

Then the vibe becomes ownership. Media outlets get bought, pushed, reshaped, traded like assets that must end up in loyal hands. The point is to make sure no one builds an audience outside the state’s control.

Then the state invents a label that works like a social stigma: “foreign agent.”

The label expands over time, up to the point when it can apply to virtually anyone. The practical meaning is simple: you’re marked. You’re forced into humiliating disclaimers. You lose advertisers. Your colleagues start to avoid you so they’ll stay in the state’s good books.

And if you keep talking anyway, the system shifts from labeling to punishment.

In March 2022, the state brought in wartime censorship laws that criminalized “false information” about the army and punished “discrediting” the armed forces. Those words are elastic on purpose. They let the state treat speech like contraband.

So a city councilor can get years in prison for saying, in a meeting, that children are dying because of the war. An artist can get years for swapping supermarket price tags with anti-war messages.

You also watch the information space get sanitized.

In early March 2022, Ekho Moskvy—one of the most famous independent radio voices—disappeared from the air and was then liquidated. TV Rain halted operations after its site was blocked.

There’s a human piece here.

Most Russians are not sitting at home thinking: “I love Big Brother.” They simply don’t want the state on their backs. So they learn the safe behaviors. Don’t repost or like controversial content. Don’t argue about politics in public. That’s how you avoid becoming the person whose name gets pulled into a case file because someone needed a performance arrest.

And this is how a society becomes quieter without ever having a single dramatic “ban everything” day. An average person starts censoring themselves before the state even shows up.

And once that habit settles in, the regime gets what it wants: obedience.

Before we move on, I’d like to share with you a short booktrailer for my novel about the early days of the Soviet dictatorship.

You can find the novel, The Prince of the Soviets, on Amazon.

Internet Kill Switch

Russia literally learned how to turn the internet off.

To do that, the state built two things.

First, the legal right to control traffic. The “sovereign internet” law in 2019 forced providers to install equipment that allows centralized filtering and blocking. In plain English: the state can look at the stream and squeeze whichever pipe it wants.

Second, the habit of using that power. In June and July 2021, Russian officials tested disconnecting from the global internet during drills. They framed it as a security response for emergencies. But in reality, it was an experiment: can we isolate the country fast, and will it still run.

Then the war became full-scale, and the “internet kill switch” stopped being theoretical.

From May 2025, mass mobile internet shutdowns started rolling through regions. The official excuse was protection from Ukrainian drones and “security” during events. But the pattern got too broad to explain away: outages hit regions far from the front, and people started living like they were in the early 2000s again—running from Wi-Fi to Wi-Fi, timing payments, planning rides, saving screenshots before leaving home.

Some reporting described a new idea: “whitelists.” During blackouts, only certain state-approved services keep working. That’s a political design: you can still use the government’s tools, but you can’t use third-party ones.

What about satellite internet? Why don’t Russians switch to it as an alternative?

For most ordinary Russians, this solution is too expensive. Starlink doesn’t officially operate in Russia. SpaceX doesn’t sell or ship Starlink to Russia and doesn’t do business with the Russian government or military. That’s why you don’t see legal consumer Starlink as a normal Russian option. What Russian troops are using on the front is smuggled and hijacked devices.

And here’s the part Russian officials don’t like to say out loud.

Unlike China, which built its wall from the beginning, Russia built a modern digital economy on top of a pretty open internet. Banks, marketplaces, logistics, taxi apps, online ads, customer service, small business accounting, software updates, cloud tools, even ordinary authentication codes—everything depends on steady connectivity.

So when you “protect” the country by cutting mobile data, you’re also punching your own economy in the teeth.

Social Networks Purge

When the state can’t control the crowd, it goes after the stage.

That’s what Russia did with social networks. Because these platforms create something authoritarian systems hate: public figures with independent audiences.

In February and March 2022, Russia restricted or blocked major Western platforms, including Facebook and Twitter. Later, a Russian court banned Facebook and Instagram after labeling Meta “extremist.”

You can argue about the official pretexts forever. The real goal was to cut off alternative distribution. Because the key shift in the last decade is this: Russians stopped getting their “big picture” from television. They started getting it from YouTube.

Not only news. Not only politics. Life advice, investing, history, interviews, military blogging, corruption investigations, comedy. Whole careers moved there. Whole communities formed there. And the Kremlin could not appoint those people, buy them, or fire them. So it squeezed the pipe.

In late July 2024, YouTube speeds in Russia dropped sharply on desktop computers—around 40% one week, and up to 70% the next. Officials pointed at Google and its servers. But the result was: YouTube became painful to use.

By then, YouTube was used by more than 50 million Russians every day. Experts warned that restricting it would hit livelihoods tied to the platform.

But the state still did it as part of its broader strategy to isolate foreign platforms that refuse censorship and data demands. The point is to make them unreliable and drive users out, into smaller, easier-to-control corners of the internet.

Telegram War Nerve

With the full-scale war, Telegram, a popular messenger, became the fastest way to move information in Russia. Not only for civilians and journalists, but for the military itself.

When you read Russian military channels on Telegram, you can feel why the state hates it. An angry platoon in a closed group can say things the Ministry of Defense never wants written down.

During the war, pro-war bloggers built massive audiences on Telegram. They posted videos from the front, named inefficient and brutal commanders, criticized logistics, screamed about corruption, and sometimes raised money for gear. That created a second, unofficial loudspeaker system inside the “patriotic” camp.

For the Kremlin, this is a nightmare with two faces.

One face is propaganda risk. Telegram can spread rumors, panic, leaks, and ugly footage faster than the state can scrub it.

The other face is coup risk. Telegram creates horizontal links. Soldiers talk to soldiers. Officers talk to bloggers. Veterans talk to volunteers. People compare what they were promised with what they got. And suddenly, you have a public mood inside the armed forces that is not filtered through the chain of command.

In February 2026, this tension became visible. Reporting described a crackdown on Telegram that triggered rare, open anger from soldiers and pro-war voices. They spoke up to defend the tool they rely on to function. By blocking Telegram, the system cut into its own muscle.

And officials started saying the quiet part out loud: foreign intelligence can read Telegram messages sent by Russian soldiers.

Think about what that implies. If the minister is saying it publicly, it’s not a technical footnote. It’s a political argument. The state is building a case that Telegram is not just “uncontrolled” but “unsafe.” That gives the Kremlin moral cover for restrictions, and it pressures commanders to move their people elsewhere.

So where do they want everyone to go?

To Max.

Max is the state-backed messenger launched by VK company in 2025, pitched as a national “super app.” The idea is one place for chat, calls, payments, and government services. On paper, it reads like convenience. But to many regular people, it sounds like custody.

The value of Max to the Kremlin is obvious. If you move soldiers, officials, and ordinary people onto a domestic platform built under political supervision, you don’t need to negotiate with a foreign tech company. You can just change the rules whenever you like.

And the resistance to this switch is also hard to miss. Even pro-war users don’t trust a “national messenger” to stay private. And soldiers, especially, don’t want to be the first people forced into a system they think Ukraine can penetrate or jam.

Empty Shelves, Full Stock

In August 2014, Moscow imposed a big import ban on food from the EU, the US, Canada, Norway, and others. Because the Kremlin wanted a retaliation button it could press fast. And food is perfect for that.

On TV, the state says: “We’ll replace it all.” In reality, shelves fill up with “almost there” products. Parmesan becomes “parmesan-style.” Mozzarella becomes “pizza cheese.” Labels start looking Italian, French, Swiss, while the factory is in a Russian region you’ve never heard of.

Not everyone notices at first. Taste adjusts. Expectations sink. People stop remembering what the real thing was supposed to feel like.

Then 2022 hits, and the second wave comes from a different direction: Western companies leaving and supply chains snapping. McDonald’s exits, and the replacement opens with a new name and a missing Big Mac. IKEA freezes, then winds down, then sells off assets.

Now add the workaround: “parallel imports.”

That’s the polite term for importing branded goods without the brand’s permission, through third countries. Russia formalized it in 2022 and keeps adjusting the list. So yes, plenty of Western stuff still appears in Moscow—phones, cosmetics, clothes, parts, even luxury.

But the price goes up. The warranty gets weird. The supply becomes uneven. And the entire experience shifts from “normal purchase” to “hunting.”

That’s not an accident. A hunting economy creates hierarchy. If you have money, connections, or the right job, you can still get what you want. If you don’t, you learn a new skill: making peace with shortages and substitutes.

When the Kremlin bans and restricts an everyday item, it’s rarely the elites who pay. The system is built so the cost slides downward, like water running to the basement.

The Soviet Union operated much like this. Foreign goods were sought after because of their superior quality but only available to the elite and those lucky enough to go abroad for work, like sailors on international ship routes. Most citizens had to put up with subpar domestic analogues. That gave rise to the “blat” system I describe in another video.

Ballots Without Choice

From the outside, Russia still looks like a democracy. There are elections, parliament, and political parties.

In practice, it functions like a monarchy. The president appoints the key bureaucrats. He appoints — or effectively selects — the governors. The parliament does not meaningfully control the executive branch. It does not block budgets. It does not initiate independent investigations. It does not remove ministers.

It votes.

Winning an election from outside the system is impossible. If you are not approved, you simply don’t make it to the ballot. Registration can be denied for technicalities. Signatures are invalidated. Paperwork is rejected. And if someone still becomes inconveniently popular, the courts step in.

There are no real checks and balances. And that leads to something most people don’t immediately see: ordinary citizens lose every legal instrument for defending their interests.

A small circle makes decisions that deeply affect the country — and millions of people — without meaningful oversight.

Let me make this concrete.

I follow a woman from the Tyumen region. She’s a librarian. She posts about her life on VKontkte. She shares her grocery receipts. Her medical struggles. Her pension.

She receives 24,000 rubles per month. That’s roughly 260 U.S. dollars.

About half of it goes to utilities — heating, water, electricity, and building maintenance. The rest barely covers food and medication.

She has multiple chronic illnesses. Some treatments are covered by state insurance. Many medications are not. And sometimes the drugs simply aren’t available.

And there is no mechanism to challenge any of this. You cannot protest utility prices. They go up because the state needs money. In effect, it’s a hidden tax. There is no public debate that can reverse it. No independent regulator to appeal to. No court is likely to side with you.

Recently, the security services were given expanded authority to shut down communication services. If your mobile data disappears, if your access is cut — you have no right to sue.

In a functioning democracy, you could organize and could create a civic initiative group. You could campaign for a local candidate. You could gather signatures, pressure representatives, and bring a class-action lawsuit.

In Russia, even forming an initiative group can trigger charges.

It doesn’t have to be about war. It can be about local environmental damage. A landfill. A polluted river. A toxic plant. If your activism becomes inconvenient, it can be labeled “extremism,” or tied to “foreign influence,” or simply suppressed through administrative pressure.

The system allows one type of participation: loyalty. Everything else is treated as a threat.

And once political activity outside state approval is criminalized, something fundamental changes. You are no longer a citizen. You are a subject.

And the difference between those two words is the difference between having rights — and asking for mercy.

What’s Still Allowed

Now look at what Russia does not ban.

The state bans jokes and social media, but it keeps the exits open. You can still leave Russia freely — unless you’re subject to conscription, mobilization restrictions, or belong to the security services. You can move your money out of the country.

These exits are not perfect. You can still be stopped if you’re personally in trouble with the state, or if you’re under specific restrictions. But there is no universal “you’re not allowed to leave without a good reason” policy for the whole population. The Kremlin didn’t build a wall like the Soviet Union did.

Let the dissatisfied leave. If a country is boiling, emigration becomes a pressure valve. The people most likely to protest, organize, refuse, or simply embarrass the regime can be encouraged to disappear. They don’t have to be jailed if they can be exported.

After February 2022, a huge number of Russians left. Estimates differ, and many people move back and forth, but the scale was big enough to be called the largest exodus in decades. Some left because they hated the war. Others left because they feared mobilization. And yet others because their jobs died, or their industry collapsed, or they just didn’t want their kids growing up in a country like this.

Now look at money. You’d think a regime at war would slam the gate shut and keep capital inside. And sometimes it did, in bursts, when the ruble got shaky or when the government needed discipline from exporters.

But it also kept routes for money to move.

Because officials and loyal businessmen need those routes more than anyone. They need foreign property and accounts. Even when capital controls were put in place, the system was still full of exceptions, workarounds, and special permissions. The rules are written to manage the public, not to trap the class that writes the rules.

So there’s one principle behind all similarly random prohibitions. Russia bans what creates independent coordination, alternative opinions, or makes people sympathetic towards the West. But it keeps the exits and the money channels open because those two things make the system easier to run.

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