Russian Pro-War Blogger Slams Putin: 'Traitors Are Sitting in the Kremlin'

A Russian pro-war military blogger indirectly criticized President Vladimir Putin over the war in Ukraine in now-deleted messages, suggesting the Kremlin has not yet succeeded in keeping in check all Russian milbloggers.

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) reported over the weekend that several milbloggers had been describing how the Kremlin was coopting select milbloggers to "regulate the spread of information in Russia" and was attempting to encourage critics to self-censor out of fear of punishment.

Military blogger Yegor Guzenko, who has more than 300,000 subscribers on his Telegram channel, posted a number of videos on Sunday in which he spoke critically of Russian leadership, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a U.S.-based think tank, said in its latest analysis of the conflict in Ukraine.

One clip was posted by Anton Gerashchenko, a former adviser to Ukraine's minister of internal affairs, on Sunday.

In the videos, he said that "traitors are sitting in the Kremlin" and that "inconvenient people" such as jailed former Russian military commander Igor Girkin, who has strongly criticized how the war in Ukraine has been handled, have been "removed" and placed behind bars.

Newsweek has contacted Russia's Foreign Ministry for comment by email.

Girkin, who assisted Russia's move to annex the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, was detained at his home on July 21, 2023. He had been publishing commentary critical of Russia's military strategy and setbacks since Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

Days before his arrest, Girkin called the Russian president a "cowardly mediocrity" and said Russia would not survive another presidential term by Putin.

"These are all f*****g traitors. And someone says to me, you are not afraid to speak there, and so on, you can be imprisoned," Guzenko said.

"Well, why do you put us all in prison, kill us. There are a lot of us. We are a whole country. And you have a bunch sitting there. You are already old, you will die soon. And we are young. We will figure it out. And I will not change my opinion about this whole story," he continued.

Guzenko added: "Now you are putting us in jail and killing us." These messages were later deleted.

The ISW said insights into such incidents suggest that the Kremlin is "attempting to co-opt milbloggers or encourage them to self-censor, as opposed to a more aggressive policy of direct censorship."

"The initial publication of the milblogger's critical videos demonstrates how the Kremlin has not been successful at co-opting or silencing the entire Russian information space, but the channel's later retraction of the videos suggests that the Kremlin has been successful at coercing milbloggers (and their administrative teams) to self-censor out of fear of punishment," the think tank added.

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