Putin is scared.

His "fortress" is cracking and half his decrees are now secret — so Russians can't see how badly the regime is failing.

Here's what he's hiding 👇 [1/11] There have been no precedents to this blackout in modern history. In 2023, Putin set a record: 49.5% of presidential decrees were secret. Even last year, almost 45% of his orders remain hidden from public view. Half of the Russian government's actions are now officially "invisible."

[2/11]

State-run pollster in Russia have published a noticeable drop in Putin's approval.

Last week, Russia's economy minister stood up and admitted the country's reserves are largely gone.

🧵Let's take a look at what it all could mean: [1/14] The trigger appears to be the continued economic downturn. GDP is down 1.8%, with industry and construction also weakening.

Even more strikingly, the economy minister has admitted that a large share of Russia's reserves has already been used up. Putin has demanded answers.



[2/14]finance.yahoo.com/economy/articl…

Imagine this: A major disaster hits your country. People are dying, cities are burning, the environment is ruined. You look to your national leader for a plan, but they've nowhere to be found.

Sounds unlikely? In Putin's Russia, it's an everyday reality. In 26 years in power, he has vanished every time the nation is in pain. [1/16]
Right now, in Russia's Tuapse, it's literally raining oil. After drone strikes, black soot covers the city, animals are dying, and a 10,000 sq m slick is spreading in the Black Sea. And the president is radio silent.

[2/16]

The West keeps making the same fundamental mistake about Russia.

I’ve spent a decade in the system, ten years in six different Russian prisons, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that switching the "Tsar" won't fix a thing.

Here is why the "Good Tsar" myth is a trap, and what actually needs to happen. 🧵 [1/12] There is a prevailing hope in DC and Brussels that if we just replace the current man in the Kremlin with a "liberal" leader, everything will click into place.

I’m telling you: It won’t. [2/12]

Putin just lost his "Trojan Horse" inside the EU.

Viktor Orban, one of Moscow’s most dependable EU allies, is out. This result carries massive implications for Russia’s ability to project power and disruption across Europe.

Here is why Moscow is panicking. 🧵 [1/14] Putin’s EU Veto: The End of Strategic Obstruction

For years, Orban turned Hungary into a pressure point inside the EU. Because of the bloc's need for unanimity, Budapest could, and often did, slow or block decisions on any issue, be it sanctions, funding, or military support. [2/14]

It is nearly impossible for a European to comprehend the psychological reality inside Russia. It is not just "fake news." It is a total deconstruction of reality.

Let me try to immerse you in the world Russians live in [1/9] First, understand the isolation. Around 90% of Russians have never left the country. Even fewer have ever stepped beyond the borders of the former Soviet Union.

For the vast majority, the "West" is not a place they have visited. It is a ghost story told by the state.  [2/9]

The real Iran crisis is nearing a terrifying tipping point. We are one mistake away from a catastrophic energy and water collapse that will trigger a global humanitarian emergency.

Here is why the "informal limits" are about to break: 🧵 [1/15] The Iran crisis is approaching a crossroads. Either it settles into a fragile political arrangement, or it escalates into a wider regional conflict. Either way, the consequences will reach far beyond the Middle East. [2/15]

Do you remember that recent, incredibly awkward exchange between Pashinyan and Putin in the Kremlin?

It was a masterclass in geopolitical trolling. Pashinyan literally looked Putin in the eye and teased him about Armenia having "too much democracy," even lecturing him on how they hold fair elections "twice a year." 1/4 From bragging that social media is "100% free" (a pointed jab at Putin’s total ban of social media and recent crackdown on Telegram in favor of the state-run "Max" messenger), to pointing out the lack of political prisoners, it was a bold and very public distancing from Moscow's playbook. 2/4

The generation of Europeans who understood Russia is gone.

The knowledge gap they left behind is now being filled by disinformation — and the Kremlin is exploiting it.

Here's what Europe must do before it's too late: 🧵[1/7] Europe is moving, steadily and predictably, toward a cold war with Russia. This is not a question of rhetoric or political mood, but of structural reality.

The Kremlin is already testing Europe's cohesion, and without a clear demonstration of readiness, those tests will intensify.

[2/7]

Putin's most powerful weapon in this war isn't the Oreshnik missile.

It is something far cheaper and infinitely more scalable: lies.

🧵Shameless lies literally capture cities — here're some examples: The Russian military has a term for this: "capturing a settlement on credit."

They report the victory on Telegram and TV now and plan to achieve it "someday." This way, the same town can be "taken" over and over, for example, General Kuzovlev "captured" Kupiansk twice in two months.

[2/14]militarnyi.com/en/news/gerasi…

We already knew the Kremlin was sending men to die in Ukraine.

But a new @dossier_center investigation based on leaked military records shows it's far worse than anyone imagined. For soldiers in front-line assault units, the odds of surviving the war are approaching zero.

(Read on) According to internal documents, more than 28,000 soldiers were assigned to a single Russian division in 2024. Its full wartime strength should not exceed 14,000.

That means roughly a whole division's worth of personnel was lost in one year — killed, wounded beyond return, captured, or missing.

[2/12]

The Iran war is expected to bring Putin an extra $4.5 billion in April alone. That buys him time in Ukraine, but it does not buy him a breakthrough.

Here's why: 🧵[1/6] Iran's blockade of the Strait of Hormuz removed a substantial share of global oil supply from the market, and demand for Russian crude rose sharply. At the same time, higher energy prices complicate the task for Western governments trying to maintain strict sanctions.

[2/6]

Starlink terminals on the Russian front are now just expensive dinner tables.

@elonmusk shut off every unregistered device — and it turns out the entire Russian military machine ran on an American commercial product.

(🧵Read on) In this war, internet drives the entire war machine on both sides.

Command posts look like a cross between a gamer's room — with dozens of screens streaming drone feeds, coordinating artillery in real time.

[2/12]

Ilya Remeslo filed the complaint that put Navalny on trial.

Then testified against him in a prison courtroom.

[1/16] 🧵Yesterday, he went on Telegram and called Putin a war criminal who must resign and face trial Remeslo is a 42-year-old pro-Kremlin blogger. Since at least 2015, he has filed complaints, written denunciations, and helped block opposition websites. He was not adjacent to the Kremlin's machinery — he was part of it.

[2/16]

The West spent four years building an energy strategy to make Putin irrelevant.

A war in Iran could collapse it in months — not by restoring Russian supply, but by proving the alternative is just as fragile. (🧵Read on — 1/13) When Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, he committed a strategic error that had nothing to do with the battlefield. He demonstrated to every European buyer that Russia was an unreliable energy supplier.



[2/13] eia.gov/todayinenergy/…

Journalists have exposed Center 795 — Russia's newest assassination unit.

It was caught because one of its officers used Google Translate to talk to a hired killer, and did so under the watchful eye of the FBI. 🧵[1/12] Center 795 was created in December 2022 after Unit 29155, the GRU squad behind the Skripal poisoning and the Montenegro coup attempt, was exposed.

Investigators identified officers by name, by photo, and even by their passports, which had been issued with consecutive numbers.

[2/12]

iPods now cost up to $7000 in Moscow — when your music streaming dies mid-commute because there is no mobile signal, you need one.

🧵The center of the capital has had no mobile internet for an entire week. [1/9] Mobile internet across the center of Moscow stopped working on March 6. At first, a handful of government-approved sites still loaded: public services, state railways, VKontakte. By March 12, six days into the blackout, nothing opens at all, with or without a VPN.

[2/9]

In this photo, a baby taken from an orphanage in occupied Kherson is being baptized into the family of a major Russian party leader. They gave her a new name and erased her birthplace.

🧵A new UN report traces the system Putin built to do this at scale The girl's name is Margarita Prokopenko. She had a legal guardian in Ukraine, Darina Repina, who was also caring for her sister Anna.

After the occupation, the family reached Greece. Repina wants both sisters together but the Putin's regime has not returned Margarita.



[2/12]eng.obozrevatel.com/section-news/n…

Putin's shadow war on EU is no longer run by professionals. The Kremlin lost most of its spy networks and replaced them with desperate people willing to work for cash.

🧵One taxi driver shows what that looks like in practice Western security officials say Aleksei Kolosovsky, a 42-year-old from Krasnodar, has become a key facilitator in the Kremlin's sabotage campaign across Europe.

He is not a trained intelligence officer. He is a former cab driver who investigators say works closely with the GRU.

[2/20]

Over 12,000 complaints about commanders killing their own soldiers, filed with Russian military prosecutors over three and a half years of war.

A team of journalists tracked the officers doing it and identified over 60 by name: [🧵1/12]
The investigation, "Обнулители" (The Nullifiers) published in Verstka (@verstka_media), by Ivan Zhadaev, Olesya Gerasimenko, Rina Richter, and Ivan Smurov documents how Russian officers execute their own troops through beatings, forced assaults, and drone strikes on the wounded:

[2/12]verstka.media/im-pohuj-kogo-…

Polish border guards found a tunnel from Belarus that was 1.5 meters high, braced with concrete, and built by specialists Warsaw believes came from the Middle East.

🧵Here is how Moscow is turning migration into a weapon against Europe — [1/9]
The tunnel near Narewka was reportedly 1.5 meters high and braced to prevent collapse. Warsaw believes Belarus brought in Middle Eastern specialists with direct experience in complex tunnel construction to design and build them.

[2/9]