Honestly, I’m not full on Russian. I haven’t lived there since 2022 and when I did I was not meaningfully politically active, nor do I personally know many people who are. All I really have is the language and a view of Russian social media.
However Russia still has free and open Internet access, with the notable exception of Facebook Instagram and Twitter (and lots of people evade those blocks as well- laws on firewall evasion are harsh but enforced pretty selectively, like for content piracy in the West).
Unfortunately many politically opinionated Russians seem to have very right wing politics only occasionally dressed up in “liberal” language (hey, kinda like America). For example, a prevailing opinion among “liberal” opposition is that Gaza should be annexed and/or turned into a parking lot by Israel (possibly because Putin himself has expressed lukewarm verbal support for Palestine). And also like America this is a generational thing with the youth seeming to be more left wing/anticapitalist, but that position is locked out of politics. But even on e.g. reddit you still have plenty of people on /r/askarussian. Same for YouTube and telegram. Those are all proper social media with sizeable Russian populations and relatively lax censorship. I’m sure there are some on the fediverse too, but they can’t get too uppity lest they invoke the wrath of roskomnadzor (fedi is more vulnerable to selective censorship than centralized networks like yt/tg). I’ll compile and link to a list of English speaking public figures I like in a followup comment.
As for the future changes, it’s very hard to predict, but I think the most probable change in Russia will start after something happens to the physical health of one very paranoid man. The war is so clearly against the objective interests of a very large portion of Russia’s ruling class that I’m amazed it was allowed to happen at all, but so far it seems like an effective method/excuse to tighten the screws on internal opposition. Seems like that’s really the only thing the regime excels at and how they stay in power. The tipping point (as it was all the other times) is a physically unbearable economic crisis, to the point people start experiencing real hardship such as famine. At that point people start looking around for alternative answers to their political questions.
Honestly, I’m not full on Russian. I haven’t lived there since 2022 and when I did I was not meaningfully politically active, nor do I personally know many people who are. All I really have is the language and a view of Russian social media.
However Russia still has free and open Internet access, with the notable exception of Facebook Instagram and Twitter (and lots of people evade those blocks as well- laws on firewall evasion are harsh but enforced pretty selectively, like for content piracy in the West).
Unfortunately many politically opinionated Russians seem to have very right wing politics only occasionally dressed up in “liberal” language (hey, kinda like America). For example, a prevailing opinion among “liberal” opposition is that Gaza should be annexed and/or turned into a parking lot by Israel (possibly because Putin himself has expressed lukewarm verbal support for Palestine). And also like America this is a generational thing with the youth seeming to be more left wing/anticapitalist, but that position is locked out of politics. But even on e.g. reddit you still have plenty of people on /r/askarussian. Same for YouTube and telegram. Those are all proper social media with sizeable Russian populations and relatively lax censorship. I’m sure there are some on the fediverse too, but they can’t get too uppity lest they invoke the wrath of roskomnadzor (fedi is more vulnerable to selective censorship than centralized networks like yt/tg). I’ll compile and link to a list of English speaking public figures I like in a followup comment.
As for the future changes, it’s very hard to predict, but I think the most probable change in Russia will start after something happens to the physical health of one very paranoid man. The war is so clearly against the objective interests of a very large portion of Russia’s ruling class that I’m amazed it was allowed to happen at all, but so far it seems like an effective method/excuse to tighten the screws on internal opposition. Seems like that’s really the only thing the regime excels at and how they stay in power. The tipping point (as it was all the other times) is a physically unbearable economic crisis, to the point people start experiencing real hardship such as famine. At that point people start looking around for alternative answers to their political questions.