Western media and specialized analysts, closely monitoring Russia’s political dynamics, identify a number of internal and external factors that, in their view, pose a real threat to Vladimir Putin and his power vertical.
Among these factors are Russia’s dependence on hydrocarbon exports, restricted access to Western technologies and investment, the exit of Western corporations, the system’s absolute centralization around the figure of Vladimir Putin coupled with the absence of a transparent transition mechanism, the depletion of resources resulting from a protracted war, and the redirection of trade and technological flows toward Beijing. The latter provides China with the leverage to exert pressure on the Kremlin and limits Russia’s sovereign maneuverability.
The paradox lies in the fact that none of the above reflects the actual processes shaping Russia’s geopolitical development.
Modern Russia is undergoing a period of profound transformation driven by its technological lag in the IT sector and the forced relocation of productive forces to the east. While Russia had oriented itself toward cooperation with Europe for centuries, it is now hastily pivoting toward China and India.
It is precisely these systemic issues that are generating a growing public fatigue with the state.
1. Increased Control and Public Fatigue: The Paradox of Manageability
Independent Russian political scientists are documenting a paradoxical situation: the formal manageability of the state is rising—the authorities firmly control political parties, the regional vertical, the digital environment, and communication channels. However, the public’s assessment of this manageability is steadily declining. For citizens, the expansion of control zones increasingly looks less like the restoration of order and more like mounting pressure on daily life.
This discontent stems from three distinct sources:
- The Economy: Rising prices, shrinking household budgets, and the forced necessity to cut down on routine expenses.
- The Prohibitive Agenda: Internet restrictions, disruptions of familiar digital services, and a constant feeling that the state is poised to shut down, ban, or complicate something. This creates a persistent, irritating background noise.
- The Political Demand for Change: A unique situation has emerged in Russia—society is not demanding a revolution, but rather normalization: a reduction in anxiety, and the return of predictability and peaceful life.
Opinion poll data confirms this turning point: while as recently as late March a calm mood prevailed over anxiety (49% versus 44%), the situation has now inverted—51% are anxious compared to 41% who feel calm. This is no longer a temporary spike following bad news, but a sustained background under which people are beginning to evaluate the authorities differently.
The government absorbs the main blow of this dissatisfaction: its positive approval rating dropped from 55% in February to 46%, while negative ratings rose from 19% to 32%. In the public consciousness, President Putin remains a figure associated with foreign policy and security, whereas the government is viewed as the administrator of prices, incomes, utility tariffs, and quality of life. However, the erosion is gradually affecting Putin as well: officially, the president’s performance is approved by 71%, but unofficial data indicates that his actual approval sits below 60%. People still support the president, but they are increasingly less willing to view the current state of affairs as prosperous and comfortably managed.
A key symptom is the dynamic of the campaign for the upcoming State Duma elections, which is accompanied by a loss of public support for all political parties without exception. Even those parties that enjoy unlimited backing from the Kremlin, including newly formed entities, are met with indifference or growing irritation by the majority of the population.
The larger part of society is seeking neither radical protest nor mobilizational rhetoric, but a moderate alternative—the language of normalization and reduced pressure.
The authorities may well win the elections due to their total control, but the defining question of 2026 extends far beyond the voting results: is the system capable of hearing the demand for normalization coming from the grassroots level? Control stripped of hope ceases to be perceived as stability and begins to be experienced as fatigue.
2. The Technological Impasse
Russia has run into an unexpected bottleneck: the import substitution of IT technologies has proven impossible.
While socio-political problems manifest in fluctuating ratings, the technological problem is fundamental and structural.
A comparison with the United States and China reveals a catastrophic lag in the Russian IT industry. To grasp the scale: in 2025, U.S. investment alone in software development reached $754 billion, while investment in physical infrastructure (primarily data centers) stood at $768 billion, totaling over $1.5 trillion. China, for its part, reports software industry revenues of $2.2 trillion.
In Russia, the turnover of the IT sector, according to government statements, is $60 billion. However, according to estimates by Yandex, the real software market is only around $10 billion. Even if one accepts the higher government estimate, it amounts to mere single-digit percentages of the American or Chinese markets. Not a half, not a quarter, not even a tenth—but one-twentieth or less.
The government and business sectors relied too heavily on cooperation with the West. The Kremlin has lost both time and momentum. Worse still, in many key industries, Russian software grew twice as slowly as the global average between 2020 and 2025.
Russian consumers, now bombarded with wartime bans and restrictions, are forced to urgently migrate to domestic alternatives, some of which have turned out to be utter garbage.
The conclusion to be drawn from these figures is harsh for the Kremlin: Russia cannot currently replace foreign software. A total replacement will take years, possibly decades. Yet during this time, tens of trillions of dollars will be invested globally into creating next-generation software and hardware.
To look at another example: investment by American companies in data centers over the past year exceeded $400 billion—this is more than Russia has spent on all types of IT hardware throughout its entire history. It is this very scale of investment that enables the fierce competition among AI developers (ChatGPT, Claude, etc.), which ensures the high quality of their products. Russia possesses neither the resources nor the market mechanisms required for such a leap. Russia is forced to rely on external actors—be it the US, China, or global corporations acting as independent partners.
3. Forced Geopolitical Transformation: Relocating Productive Forces to Siberia
The third block of problems is tied to the forced restructuring of Russia’s economic geography. Ukrainian drone and missile strikes on Russian oil refineries, which have damaged 10–15% of refining facilities, exposed a fundamental vulnerability in the traditional model of distributing productive forces.
Historically, oil refineries were built in the European part of Russia—close to domestic consumers and export corridors to the West (the Baltic and Black Sea ports). In the context of a military confrontation with the West, this layout has become suicidal for Russia: even the limited resources of Ukraine and Europe can inflict substantial damage, and in the event of a direct conflict with NATO, the entire refining capacity in the European part would be obliterated within the first month.
The war has consequently forced a relocation of productive forces beyond the Urals. Oil refining is shifting toward extraction sites in Siberia. The finished product will increasingly be exported either via the Northern Sea Route (bypassing the vulnerable Baltic and Black Sea terminals) or by rail to China and Central Asia. The critical node here is that Russia must fund this massive global relocation largely on its own, a task it cannot accomplish rapidly due to an acute shortage of resources and labor. Thus, China is stepping in as the primary investor and contractor.
A prominent example is the recent agreement between Putin and Xi Jinping to construct a new railway from Transbaikalia to Manchuria. A telling detail: the railway will be built using the Chinese standard track gauge (1435 mm) rather than the Russian one (1520 mm). This represents both a symbolic and practical rupture: China is integrating Russian logistics into its land-based «New Silk Roads» rather than connecting it to the Russian transport network.
China is betting heavily on continental corridors as opposed to maritime ones. Consequently, Russia—much like what will happen to Ukraine after the war ends—is turning into a zone for Chinese landward expansion.
The ramifications for Russia’s internal geography are radical. Currently, 80% of the population resides in the European part, which accounts for just 20% of the territory. Productive forces will shift beyond the Urals, pulling the population along with them. Over time, the demographic balance between the regions «before the Urals» and «beyond the Urals» could shift from 80/20 to 70/30, 60/40, and so on. New megacities and even a «third capital»—a backup capital in the event of a prolonged standoff with the West—may emerge beyond the Urals.
In this scenario, China naturally offers no assistance to Russia in defending its European territory. Within this model, Ukraine effectively «drives» Chinese interests, forcing Russian productive capacity to move eastward.
The West is losing its future positions because by the time direct confrontation occurs (if it ever does), Russia’s core industrial assets will already be located beyond the Urals, resting against the «Great Wall of China.»
Russian analysts conclude: current events are leading not to the collapse of the Russian Federation, as some in the West believe, but to an accelerated transformation of its technological development and economic geography—with profound implications for the structure of the state itself.
The Choice Between Control, Development, and Normalization
This analysis of Russia’s internal pressures forms a cohesive picture. In the socio-political sphere, there is a widening gap between tightening control and public exhaustion, a drop in the ratings of political parties and the government, and an erosion of trust in Putin despite sustained formal loyalty, particularly from the security apparatus.
In the technological sphere, import substitution in IT is impossible due to a colossal twenty-year gap in investment and scale. This dooms Russia to years of lagging behind and necessitates a brutal technological leap in development, akin to the industrialization push executed by the USSR in the late 1920s and 1930s. This leap will ultimately have to be built on cooperation with one of the global AI superpowers—either the United States or China.
In the geo-economic sphere, the forced relocation of productive forces beyond the Urals and the realignment toward China, India, and the Global South will allow Russia to retain its capacity for independent strategic maneuver.
The Kremlin and Putin personally face a fundamental choice. The first path is to continue tightening control, justifying every new restriction by pointing to external threats and the mobilization of resources required to win the war. The second path is to attempt to transform normalization and the technological leap into a new political project—without abandoning stated goals, to return a sense to the people that a state of emergency is not becoming a permanent way of life.
The demand for this shift is no longer just latent; the majority of Russians are actively desiring these changes. To achieve this, a transition to peace negotiations and a reduction of tension in relations with the West are absolutely indispensable.
