Former top Russian official admits the country is over Putin and can ‘imagine a future without him’ — even elites bail as Kremlin seizes their assets

Russians are starting to acknowledge that President Vladimir Putin has led the country to a dead end and can’t shape its future, according to a former senior official in the Kremlin. In a recent Economist op-ed authored anonymously, the former official pointed out that fellow government peers in Moscow, regional governors and businessmen have stopped using the first person plural when describing Putin’s actions. In other words, Russia’s elites found a subtle way to no longer express solidarity with Putin, describing what “he” does rather than what “we” do. That shift took place last spring, but does not signal a rebellion is imminent, the former official added, as the state still controls key levers of repression and fear. At the same time, the regime has stopped bothering to sell a narrative of national restoration or modernization to the rest of the country, which is losing enormous amounts of blood and treasure in the battlefields of Ukraine. “The irony is that Mr. Putin started the war to preserve power and the system he has created,” the official wrote. “Now, for the first time since the conflict began, Russians are starting to imagine a future without him.” The mounting costs of Putin’s war on Ukraine have contributed to the nation’s shift, as Russians grapple with higher inflation, more taxes, crumbling infrastructure, tighter censorship, and myriad new restrictions. High inflation has also kept interest rates high. As companies and other borrowers struggle to service debt, defaults have climbed and warnings of a financial crisis have multiplied. Another factor is pushback from Russian elites, who are banned from living abroad and have lost the protection of Western laws that preserved their wealth. The former official estimated that the state has seized around $60 billion in assets from private businessmen over the past three years, either outright nationalizing their property or r