MOSCOW IN FLAMES as Putin Pushes to “Surrender”—Ukraine HITS Russia’s Capital with Surprising STRIKE
Parts of Moscow went dark this week after a nighttime wave of Ukrainian drones swept across Russian territory, leaving residents of the capital’s business district without power, trapped in stalled elevators, and locked out of banking, telecom and streaming services for hours. But the outage arrived alongside something arguably more significant for the Kremlin than a temporary blackout: a mounting chorus of warnings, from inside Russia’s own political and economic establishment, that the war is now generating exactly the kind of internal pressure Vladimir Putin has spent 25 years trying to avoid.
A Kremlin Insider’s Warning — and a Swift Firing
The most striking of these warnings came from Andrei Klepach, who served as Russia’s deputy minister of economic development from 2008 to 2014 before spending the past 12 years as chief economist at VEB, the state development bank that finances the country’s major infrastructure and industrial projects. In May, Klepach delivered a presentation titled “Russia’s Economy and Geopolitical Challenges” at the Nikitsky Club, a venue where senior Russian officials and advisers gather to debate policy direction — not a platform associated with dissidents or war critics.
According to Klepach’s own remarks, after posting record growth in 2023 and 2024, the Russian economy slowed sharply in 2025 and is now projected to fall below the growth rates of both the United States and Ukraine — a country Russia is actively fighting. “We are losing both the technological and economic competition in the world,” Klepach said, according to the presentation. “We are losing it not only to China and the United States, but in some respects even to Ukraine.” He went on to argue that Russia will not win a war of attrition against Ukraine, that the country’s healthcare system is deteriorating, and — most pointedly — that “the economy will endure, but a social crisis may emerge precisely when no one particularly expects it,” explicitly invoking Russia’s February 1917 revolution, which preceded Tsar Nicholas II’s abdication and, roughly a year later, his execution along with his family.
According to Russian media reports, Klepach was fired roughly two days after the Moscow Times covered his presentation, with a source close to the bank telling reporters anonymously that the dismissal followed a call placed directly from the Kremlin. It’s worth noting Klepach reportedly stopped short of predicting Russia’s outright collapse, saying instead that he was “almost certain” the country would face a social crisis rather than economic disintegration — a more measured position than some coverage has suggested, though evidently still uncomfortable enough for the Kremlin to act on quickly.
Echoes From Moscow’s Mayor and Others
Klepach is not alone in raising this concern publicly. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin — previously discussed in some political circles as a potential successor to Putin — recently warned that shifting the Russian economy fully onto a war footing could backfire. “If there is no peacetime economy, if there are no taxes, no personal income, and the political situation is completely different, we will not succeed in the war,” Sobyanin said, a comment that stopped short of criticizing the war itself but pushed directly against the idea of full economic mobilization that some within the Kremlin reportedly favor.
Russian political commentators have echoed similar themes. One commentator, referencing Russia’s banned Yabloko party — the country’s only officially anti-war political party, now excluded from September’s elections — argued that the idea “peace is better than war” enjoys support “far beyond what is essentially a marginal party,” suggesting that even among loyal supporters of the ruling United Russia party, there are, in his words, “millions of people quietly whispering: when will this end?” Separately, retired Russian General Staff strategist Konstantin Sivkov has warned publicly of a “sociopolitical explosion” risk, citing what he describes as visible irritation from major Russian business interests over government policy — a sign, he argues, of a genuine split within Russia’s political and economic elite.
Not Everyone Agrees
These warnings have not gone unanswered within Russia’s political establishment. Dmitry Medvedev, the former president and current deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, recently dismissed young Russians opposed to the war as “idiots,” arguing that “many people have something wrong with their heads” and calling for expanded “patriotic education.” Pro-war Russian commentators have gone further still, with one blogger publicly attacking Yabloko party chairman Nikolai Rybakov — who remains free despite the rhetoric directed at him — and arguing that anyone opposed to the war effort, or willing to consider ceding occupied territory, should be stripped of Russian citizenship entirely.
Meanwhile, the Yabloko party itself, despite being barred from September’s elections on copyright-related grounds Russian authorities have used to sideline political opponents, appears to have grown more popular rather than less since being targeted — with polling cited in Russian coverage suggesting its support has grown from roughly 3 percent to over 10 percent. One of the party’s leaders has reportedly been jailed for more than 11 years on charges of spreading misinformation about the Russian military, while youth demonstrators have continued turning out at protests despite arrests.
The Blackout in Moscow
Against this backdrop of domestic political tension, Ukraine’s latest strike on Moscow added a very literal disruption to daily life in the Russian capital. Following a nighttime wave of drone strikes across Russian territory, parts of Moscow experienced a blackout the following morning after residents reported hearing a loud pop near a substation — though it remains unclear whether that specific incident was directly tied to drone damage or resulted from a knock-on effect within Russia’s aging infrastructure. Roughly ten people were reported trapped in a theater elevator, and outage reports surged across telecom providers, banks, social networks and streaming platforms, with an estimated 10,000 Muscovites affected. Whatever the precise technical cause, the disruption landed squarely in Moscow’s business district — a part of the country that has historically been shielded from the war’s more direct consequences.
Markets Reflect the Strain
Russia’s stock market has registered similar strain in recent trading, with banking shares down alongside e-commerce firms like Wildberries and its rival Ozon — both of which have faced sustained Ukrainian strikes on their logistics infrastructure in recent months — as well as oil companies, which represent a substantial share of the broader Russian economy. In commentary accompanying recent battlefield analysis, one military analyst described the destruction of Wildberries facilities as more than simple property damage, noting that the warehouses doubled as informal supply depots where Russian buyers could purchase fiber-optic cable for drones, thermal rifle scopes, night-vision equipment, body armor and ballistic helmets — meaning strikes on the facilities disrupt both civilian commerce and a parallel channel feeding military-adjacent equipment to buyers. Wildberries has reportedly passed new contract terms explicitly disclaiming liability for drone-related damage to seller inventory, a move that took effect roughly a week before the most recent wave of attacks began.
A Battlefield Context Largely Missing From Western Coverage
The wave of domestic warnings and the Moscow disruption arrive alongside what Ukrainian officials describe as their largest counteroffensive since 2023, reportedly reversing much of the territory Russia claimed to have gained earlier this year while inflicting substantial Russian casualties. That claim — and the broader question of how thoroughly Ukraine’s recent counteroffensive has reshaped the battlefield picture — has received comparatively limited attention from major Western outlets so far, a gap that has drawn criticism from independent commentators tracking the war closely, even as Russian state media continues to promote its own account of steady advances.
A Regime Under Multiple Forms of Pressure
None of this — a fired economist, a mayor’s cautious warning, a banned party’s rising poll numbers, a temporary blackout in the capital — amounts to evidence that Putin’s government is on the verge of collapse. Russian officials and state media continue to project confidence, and the security apparatus underpinning the regime remains firmly in place heading into September’s elections. But the accumulation of internal warnings, arriving from figures inside Russia’s own economic and political establishment rather than from external critics, suggests a level of unease about the war’s trajectory that the Kremlin is evidently working hard, and sometimes abruptly, to suppress.
