Far-right war bloggers are an increasingly vocal and influential group inside Russia.
One of the bloggers, a former FSB officer Igor Girkin criticizes the president Vladimir Putin more violently than ever before in its most recent update (you switch to another service).
War the next US think tank According to ISW (you switch to another service) he suggests that it is time for Putin to back off.
– Russia is on the brink of military defeat and it is not only the generals and soldiers who are responsible, but the commander-in-chief who has appointed them and refuses to replace them, Girkin writes.
War bloggers have been criticizing Russia’s poor combat success for months, most recently in Bahmut. They also directly blamed the Russian military leadership for the Ukrainian attacks on Makijivka on New Year’s Eve.
The group are called war bloggers because they report on their social media accounts as if they were blogging.
Girkin has criticized Putin before. In December, he posted on Telegram and Youtube video (you will switch to another service)where it says that “the head of the fish is completely rotten”.
That the Kremlin tolerates such harsh criticism is amazing. Other critics face severe penalties, up to 15 years in prison.
A military professor at the National Defense University Aki-Mauri Huhtinen according to him, war bloggers would not have the opportunity to present harsh criticism if it had not been approved in the Kremlin.
– They are not ordinary fraudsters, but they have power inside Russia and connections to the Kremlin, says Huhtinen.
Until now, war bloggers have mostly left Putin out of their criticism. The sound is clearly changing now.
– Now the criticism is also aimed directly at Putin. In the past, it has concerned the system and has been under Putin’s control, says Huhtinen.
According to Huhtinen, the important thing is whether the war bloggers remain loyal to Putin and the failed attack.
– They can wield power, says Huhtinen.
When bloggers’ criticism (you will switch to another service) was asked some time ago from the Kremlin, a spokesperson Dmitry Peskov responded in a cautionary tone that critical voices are allowed as long as they are careful not to cross “a line that is very, very thin.”
According to Huhtinen, it will become clear in the next two to three months how much criticism Putin tolerates.
– Putin is balancing. His next outing reveals the situation.
However, according to Huhtinen, it is clear that the Kremlin is no longer able to fog the Russians, because there are so many dead bodies coming home.
Are war bloggers a threat to Putin?
The war bloggers’ rant has now had unforeseen consequences.
Their criticism would seem to increase extreme nationalists such as the Wagner group and its founder Yevgeny Prigozhin popularity. Wagner is a Russian infamous private army made up of mercenaries.
Prigozhin himself has also openly begun to criticize the traditional military leadership, and bloggers have praised his views.
– Prigozhin is clearly seeking political power. If there is a power coup at the top, the war bloggers have no loyalty, they play for whoever wins, says Huhtinen.
However, Huhtinen does not see that war bloggers are, at least not yet, a direct threat to Putin. Putin has been building the Kremlin’s information warfare apparatus for over 15 years, and everyone involved in the operation is connected to Putin’s inner circle.
– Putin will not make the mistake of giving away too much power. But when the power struggle intensifies, the situation can change, says Huhtinen.
Huhtinen urges to follow what happens to bloggers.
– It is significant. Will they fall out of the window or can they continue to be harshly criticized and ultimately into whose pocket, he says.
Why doesn’t Putin silence critics?
According to Huhtinen, Putin has been ready to withstand criticism from a group he considers loyal.
The power of war bloggers is based on the fact that they criticize the war from a so-called patriotic point of view. It means that they do not question the attack on Ukraine, Huhtinen explains.
What makes war bloggers credible is that they know how to look at war through the eyes of an expert.
– The criticism they present towards the army and combat success is based on information, and it always has a military strategic perspective, says Huhtinen.
According to the military professor, Putin also needs far-right war bloggers, because he cannot get the Russian people to sacrifice and support the failed war in any other way.
– Despite the criticism, war bloggers maintain a nationalistic, war-supporting and glorifying story that the people believe in, says Huhtinen.
Who are war bloggers?
The most famous war bloggers either work at the front or have sources in the structures of the Russian army, it turns out Institute for the Study of War (you move to another service) – from the information of the think tank. Thus, they have access to first-hand information past censorship.
War bloggers publish content on major Russian social media platforms, such as Telegram and Rutube. They have hundreds of thousands, some even millions of followers.
According to the ISW report, war bloggers also include correspondents of Russian state media such as Komsomolskaya Pravda, Ria and Ria Fan, who have good connections to the front line.
In addition, Russian-appointed leaders in Donetsk and Luhansk regions act as war bloggers. They also spread information and footage from the front line. They are outspoken supporters of the Russian invasion, but criticize the Kremlin’s war strategy at will.
According to ISW, some war bloggers are still in official positions in the Kremlin. Putin has even promoted some of the most powerful to keep them loyal.
Igor Girkin
One of the most famous and most critical channels of the Russian leadership belongs to Igor Girkin. He is a former employee of the Russian intelligence agency FSB and is also known as Strelkov.
Girkin led pro-Russian separatist forces in eastern Ukraine in 2014.
In 2014, he participated in the shooting down of a Malaysian airliner en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur in eastern Ukraine. 298 people died in the crash.
Girkin has been one of the most outspoken critics of the Russian leadership. She is stated in his video (you will switch to another service)that “We have already lost, the end is only a matter of time.”
Girkin also commented on Makijivka’s attacks in Telegram. He confirmed, contrary to Kremlin propaganda, that there were hundreds of dead and wounded Russian soldiers. He added that the victims were mainly mobilized forces – in other words, reservists under mobilization.
“Almost all the military equipment that was standing right next to the building without any kind of camouflage was also destroyed,” he wrote in Telegram.
Girkin has also repeatedly criticized Putin directly.
Yuri Podoljaka
War blogger Yuri Podoljaka is a pro-Russian Ukrainian political writer and blogger. His number of followers on social media skyrocketed when Russia invaded Ukraine in February, according to the think tank Institute for Strategic Dialogue (you will switch to another service).
Podoljaka left Ukraine and moved to Russian-occupied Crimea in 2014. As of February 2022, Podoljaka’s social media following has exploded despite the fact that his main Youtube account has been deleted. His main channel Telegram had around 26,671 subscribers at the beginning of the war. In June, the number of followers was over 2.19 million.
In May, Podoljaka wrote to his followers that he had avoided criticizing the army, but the complete failure of the troops at the Donets River had filled his measure. More than 400 Russian soldiers are estimated to have been killed or wounded in that battle.
Podoljaka has assembled a large group of volunteers who translate and distribute the contents of his “Info Defence” account widely on social media and try to get it to foreign media as well.
Because the network is decentralized, it is difficult to know how many accounts are sharing content.
Rybar
The third most influential war account is Rybar, or Fisherman in Finnish. Rybar is an anonymous account that shares detailed maps of the front lines and repeatedly criticizes the Kremlin and the Russian Ministry of Defense. It has more than 1.1 million followers.
There is no exact information about the person behind the Rybar channel. Russian investigative news network The Bell (switch to another service) has presented evidence based on which a former employee of the press service of the Russian Ministry of Defense would be behind Rybar. If that’s true, Rybar has at least had a solid connection to the Putin administration.
The Bell (switch to another service) says that Rybar’s follower count grew sharply in September and October to over a million followers.
The increase in the use of Telegram and the Rybar case highlight Russians’ distrust of the Kremlin’s official narratives and the desire to look for other reporting on the war, says Huhtinen from the National Defense University.
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