Ukraine has also intensified drone strikes against Russian energy infrastructure, targeting both occupied Crimea and locations deep inside Russia, including Moscow and St Petersburg. <\/p>\n
Fuel shortages and internet outages are now affecting much of the country, and public frustration appears to be growing. The Russian president himself has publicly acknowledged<\/a> that Russia is facing difficult circumstances.<\/p>\n There has been a great deal of speculation that Putin\u2019s position is increasingly tenuous. The most recent survey by Russia\u2019s state pollster, VCIOM<\/a>, for June 22-28, found that Putin\u2019s job approval rating fell to 66.9%, down from 70.4% the previous week. The percentage saying they disapprove of his performance rose from 19.7% to 21.3%. His trust rating, meanwhile, fell from 76.7% to 73.3% over the same period.<\/p>\n It\u2019s Putin\u2019s lowest rating since the beginning of the full-scale invasion in 2022. But this still doesn\u2019t indicate that his presidency is in particular peril. The Russian president remains by far the most popular political leader according to the VCIOM poll, and his party, United Russia, sits at the top of the list when it comes to people\u2019s voting intentions.<\/p>\n But there are certainly some indications that Putin himself may feel increasingly vulnerable. His decision to massively scale down the annual Victory Day parade on Moscow\u2019s Red Square on May 9 suggested heightened concerns about the danger of drone attacks from Ukraine. Putin has also become increasingly secretive about his whereabouts. Reports of his use of multiple identical offices<\/a>, combined with longstanding speculation about body doubles<\/a>, have reinforced an image of a leader preoccupied with security. <\/p>\n Such precautions may be intended to counter external threats. But they may also reflect anxiety about potential challenges from within the Russian elite.<\/p>\n Recent events have highlighted this possibility<\/a>. Earlier this month, prominent blogger Ilya Remeslo, once a staunch supporter of the Russian president, was remanded in custody for two months on suspicion of spreading false information against the military. In March 2026, he published a blog post under the headline: \u201cFive reasons why I stopped supporting Vladimir Putin\u201d<\/a>. <\/p>\n Similarly, on June 25, Aleksandr Lunin, a veteran of the war in Ukraine who has become a prominent \u201cmilblogger\u201d \u2013 online commentators of military affairs, often, like Lunin, ex-military \u2013 posted a video warning of possible mutiny<\/a>, demanding a televised conversation with Putin about Russia\u2019s military failures. He has also been detained, which effectively ended his public campaign. Nevertheless, the incident revealed signs of discontent in parts of the military and invited comparisons with the time preceding Yevgeny Prigozhin\u2019s mutiny in June 2023.<\/p>\n But history tells us how hard it is to unseat a Russian (or Soviet) leader. Since the revolution in 1917, the vast majority have died in office \u2013 and the likeliest scenario is still that Putin will follow this pattern. After the constitutional amendments of 2020, there is nothing, save physical health issues, stopping him from remaining in office until the year 2036, at which point he will be 84. <\/p>\n With the exception of the short-term interim leader Georgy Malenkov<\/a>, who took power after the death of Josef Stalin in 1953, only to be outmanoeuvred and replaced by Nikita Khrushchev within two years, only two leaders have faced outright coup attempts. The only one who was ousted was Nikita Khrushchev<\/a>. He narrowly escaped a coup attempt already in 1957 but was finally ousted in 1964 . <\/p>\nJob for life<\/h2>\n
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