A Putinist’s Sudden Awakening. Illya Remeslo Stunned the Public

Politicised Russian society, both at home and abroad, is in an uproar. People cannot believe their eyes and ears.

Illya Remeslo — a professional informant, a Putin “loyalist” and provocateur who spent years fighting Alexei Navalny and backing the war — suddenly published the following post on his Telegram channel, and later confirmed it in a video. He claims he is still in Russia. People are already betting on how much longer he will remain alive and free. The link is in the comments.

Five reasons why I stopped supporting Vladimir Putin.

Someone had to say it.

1. The war in Ukraine.
   A war that began as a “police operation” has already claimed between one and two million victims.
   Back in 2014, I supported the annexation of Crimea precisely because it happened without bloodshed. At the time, many of us believed Putin was a unifier of Russian lands. And where have we ended up? “Meat assaults”, tricking people into signing military contracts, and much else besides — all of which any participant in the “special military operation” will confirm to you. This is a completely hopeless war, with enormous losses, and it could drag on for another five or ten years — are you ready for that? No one is calling for war against Russia. But now the war is being fought solely because of Putin’s complexes, and we, ordinary citizens, gain nothing from it — we only lose.
2. The enormous damage done to Russia’s economy and to people’s standard of living.
   Sanctions, destroyed infrastructure, lost trading partners. Even by official statistics, the cost runs into trillions of dollars — money that could have been used to build cities, schools, children’s hospitals and completely modernise public utilities. Instead, what gets built are palaces for the president and his friends. Even before the war, the economy had serious problems: in the richest country on earth, tens of millions of people live in poverty. The authorities have become so brazen that they are now confiscating even people’s animals, as happened recently in Novosibirsk.
3. The strangling of internet and media freedom.
   By a twist of fate, it was I who, back in 2017, asked Putin at an ONF media forum about the future direction of the internet in Russia. He told me then that we would not go down the Chinese path — and he lied. Putin himself does not use the internet, which is disgraceful for a head of state.
   We can see that mobile internet no longer works properly even in major Russian cities. All Western social media platforms and messaging apps have been blocked. Telegram is already 80 per cent blocked, and a full block is reportedly planned for 1 April.
   The system has gone so mad that it is even throttling Telegram, which is used by participants in the “special military operation” as well. At the same time, people are being herded into Kiriyenko’s “multinational” messenger Max, while being deprived of their right to healthcare and education.
4. The sheer length of Putin’s rule.
   Putin is entering his seventy-fourth year and has been in power since 1999 — more than 26 or 27 years already. And by all appearances, he plans to stay on the throne until at least the age of 150.
   As the saying goes, absolute power corrupts absolutely — and what happens when it is also endless? Even a morally impeccable person would be warped by such a situation. And Putin was not always the man he is today: until 2003, it was hard to level any truly serious criticism at him, which is why many of us supported him. But everything comes to an end. We need a new, modern president.
5. Putin does not respect his voters and does not want to hear them.
   Watch any of his recent “direct lines” — they are pure circus. The president is plainly uninterested in domestic politics or in voters’ problems. He no longer reads Telegram channels, and our everyday anger means nothing to him. What Putin wants is endless war — wars in which, incidentally, neither his children nor his relatives are fighting — not the internet and decent wages.
   There is no opposition to speak of. For all these 26 years, Putin himself kept saying that criticism of the authorities and political opposition were important.
   So name me even one MP or civic activist who openly criticises Putin. There are none. Those who tried have either been branded “foreign agents”, driven abroad, or buried underground.
   Putin fears debates and fair elections — because then it would instantly become obvious that the emperor has no clothes.

Conclusion: Vladimir Putin is not a legitimate president. Vladimir Putin must resign and stand trial as a war criminal and a thief.

Long live freedom, damn it!

I will add a sixth reason to this post — one more reason why I, and indeed any normal citizen, will not support Putin.

1. A deranged, almost pathological obsession with luxury.
   I used to think all those “foreign agent” investigations into yachts and residences were somewhat exaggerated. But by 2026, it was no longer possible to hide any of it.
   Putin really does have around 20 palace-like residences across the country, along with planes and armoured trains. And because incompetent or corrupt people work for him, all of it ends up in the hands of foreign intelligence services.

I have written before about global elites who, instead of entering history for something worthwhile, build themselves their own “Epstein island”.

I think the situation in Russia is very similar. Putin had everything: high energy prices, a vast country with every imaginable resource, and a population that genuinely supported the young president. He could have done anything — scientific breakthroughs, the best artificial intelligence in the world, a flight to Mars, the exploration of Sirius. Or at the very least, he could have radically improved people’s lives.

Instead, Putin chose the wrong path — the path of enriching himself and his friends from the Ozero cooperative. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been thrown to the wind.
Just think how primitive that is: to be president of Russia and to squander yourself — and the gift that, so to speak, fell into your lap from heaven — on something like this.

Putin is literally Shura Balaganov from The Little Golden Calf: a man who was given fifty or a hundred thousand fifteen minutes ago, and still sticks his hand into his aunt’s pocket for 13 roubles. “It just came over me.”

After this, Remeslo gave an interview to the opposition outlet Astra, where he confirmed that he had hounded Navalny for money he received from Putin’s office.

A complete collapse.