Prominent Russian blogger Victoria Bonya has caught the Kremlin’s attention with her critical video message to President Vladimir Putin regarding the problems in Russia.
“In fact,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Thursday, “it has attracted a great many views and the attention of the public on social media. That is certainly the case.”
They had watched the video themselves in the Kremlin, he added. “It addresses many issues that (…) are actually being worked on.”
Bonya, who has around 13 million followers on Instagram, criticizes internet blocks by the authorities, for example.
Peskov explained that the blocks serve security purposes in Russia. He suggested that the situation would normalize once the fighting against Ukraine had ended, but didn’t specify when that might happen.
Bonya also lamented that people in distress are left to fend for themselves. She refers, for instance, to the flood disaster in the Russian republic of Dagestan following heavy rainfall, where many people have been left homeless whilst corrupt officials line their pockets.
The blogger, who rose to fame through a reality TV show, said that no one dares to inform Putin about the true situation.
“Vladimir Vladimirovich, people are afraid of you,” she emphasizes in her video message, which received over a million likes on Instagram and many supportive comments.
Some now believe Bonya should stand in the presidential election for her courageous stance. But she rejects this, and says that she wants it to be clearly understood that she is a supporter of Putin.