In Vladimir Putin’s Russia, the absurd has become routine. Imagine trying to catch a flight from Moscow only to find the airport shuttered, your phone’s signal dead, and your bank card useless at the ATM. This isn’t a dystopian novel—it’s the daily reality for millions of Russians caught in the crosshairs of a war the Kremlin refuses to name. You get the sense that the Russian state, in its desperate bid to maintain a facade of normalcy, is waging a war not just against Ukraine but against its own people. The thesis is stark: Putin’s regime, built on denial and propaganda, is dismantling Russia’s infrastructure, economy, and social fabric, all while pretending everything is fine. What’s troubling is how this slow-motion collapse reveals a deeper truth: a system obsessed with control is losing its grip on reality.
A War That Dare Not Speak Its Name
Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, now in its fourth year, was sold to the public as a distant endeavor that wouldn’t touch daily life. The Kremlin promised stability—business as usual, with Moscow’s glittering malls and St. Petersburg’s cultural festivals untouched. Yet, the reality is a far cry from those assurances. Major cities like Kazan and Izhevsk are now routinely plunged into chaos: airports close for days, mobile networks vanish, and GPS signals—Russia’s own GLONASS system included—are jammed to thwart drone attacks. This isn’t a one-off crisis; it’s the new baseline. The irony is bitter: a government that denies being at war has turned its heartland into a de facto war zone.
Historically, authoritarian regimes have thrived on controlling the narrative, but Putin’s Russia takes this to a surreal extreme. The state’s refusal to acknowledge the war’s domestic fallout—coupled with laws that criminalize calling it a war—has created a cognitive dissonance that permeates daily life. Russians are conditioned to shrug off grounded flights as “bad weather” or internet blackouts as “technical glitches.” It’s a chilling echo of Soviet-era apathy, where citizens learned to endure shortages and surveillance with a resigned sigh. But this isn’t the 1980s. In a 21st-century economy reliant on digital connectivity and global trade, these disruptions aren’t just inconveniences—they’re existential threats to Russia’s stability.
The Bureaucrats Holding Up a Sinking Ship
If the military is the face of Putin’s war, the unsung heroes—or perhaps victims—of this mess are Russia’s civilian bureaucrats. Governors, mayors, and local administrators are tasked with keeping the country running while the Kremlin plays geopolitical chess. These officials, hunched over Excel spreadsheets in dimly lit offices, are the ones patching together a crumbling system. They’ve devised creative workarounds—shadow fleets to smuggle oil, gray-market routes to import iPhones, and “volunteer” military contracts with hefty bonuses to avoid mass conscription riots. It’s a grim kind of ingenuity, born not of innovation but of desperation.
Yet, these bureaucrats are fighting a losing battle. They can smuggle semiconductors or baby formula, but they can’t stop a drone from slamming into an oil refinery. They can’t fix a radar jammed by their own military to confuse Ukrainian drones. The Ministry of Defense, ostensibly responsible for security, is too busy chasing phantoms—raiding Telegram channels for dissent or prosecuting “LGBTQ conspiracies”—to address real threats. This misallocation of resources isn’t just incompetence; it’s a feature of a regime that prioritizes loyalty over capability. The result? A country where a single radar blip can paralyze air travel, and a food delivery app might send your pizza to St. Petersburg instead of Moscow.
Infrastructure Under Siege
War and modern infrastructure are incompatible, and Russia is learning this the hard way. A functioning economy depends on reliable systems—GPS for logistics, internet for banking, air travel for commerce. But in Putin’s Russia, these systems are collateral damage in an undeclared war. Drones don’t just threaten military targets; they disrupt civilian life, turning cities into no-fly zones and rendering digital services unreliable. Imagine trying to run a business when your location signal flips every ten minutes, or a hospital unable to access patient records because the internet is down. These aren’t hypotheticals—they’re real stories from Russians navigating a system that’s failing them.
The government’s response is to double down on denial. Roskomnadzor, Russia’s internet regulator, blocks websites and throttles dissent while infrastructure crumbles. The Ministry of Defense blames “NATO pigeons” for fires at oil depots rather than admitting systemic failures. Meanwhile, the technicians and engineers who could fix these problems are either drafted, labeled “foreign agents,” or fleeing the country. It’s a vicious cycle: the state breaks things, covers it up, and punishes those who notice. The scariest part? This chaos isn’t temporary. It’s the new normal, a permanent state of dysfunction that exposes the fragility of Putin’s “vertical of power.”
Chasing Shadows While the Country Burns
You’d think Russia’s security services, with their vast budgets and unchecked power, would be laser-focused on protecting the homeland. Instead, they’re distracted by imaginary enemies. The FSB, Russia’s successor to the KGB, spends its days fabricating threats—Satanist cabals in Berlin, LGBTQ “terrorists” in Moscow—while real saboteurs drive trucks loaded with drones through populated areas. Oil refineries explode, railroads burn, and the response is to ban another website or arrest a blogger for “discrediting the military.” It’s absurd, like watching a firefighter ignore a blaze to chase a stray cat.
This obsession with phantom threats isn’t just a distraction; it’s a deliberate strategy to justify repression. By inventing enemies, the regime distracts from its failures and keeps the population in a state of fear. But the cost is staggering. Generals are killed or “retire” suspiciously, infrastructure collapses, and the economy limps along on a pirate network of middlemen. The real tragedy is that the bureaucrats and planners trying to hold Russia together will bear the blame when the system collapses. The true culprits—Putin and his loyalists—will likely retreat to their dachas, leaving ordinary Russians to pick up the pieces.
A Nation on the Brink
What’s most troubling about Russia’s unraveling is how it exposes the limits of authoritarian control. Putin’s regime has survived for decades by suppressing dissent and controlling information, but it’s running out of tricks. Propaganda can’t mask the reality of grounded flights, empty ATMs, or drone shrapnel in city streets. The social contract—endure hardship in exchange for stability—is breaking down, and apathy is giving way to frustration. You get the sense that ordinary Russians, conditioned to expect nothing, are starting to question everything.
The historical parallels are striking. The Soviet Union collapsed not because of a single cataclysm but because of accumulated failures—economic stagnation, military overreach, and a disconnect between the state and its people. Putin’s Russia, with its brittle bureaucracy and delusional leadership, is treading a similar path. The question isn’t whether the system will crack, but when—and what will emerge from the wreckage. For now, Russians endure, but endurance has its limits. As the drones keep flying and the internet keeps failing, the Kremlin’s house of cards grows shakier by the day.
Frankly, the world should be watching. Russia’s silent war on itself isn’t just a domestic tragedy; it’s a warning to any nation that prioritizes control over competence. The lesson is clear: you can’t build a future on lies, no matter how loudly you shout them.
