Captive Audience: How Putin Shapes Russian Opinions

Newsweek

a day ago

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Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan were toasting the new millennium with their fellow journalists when former president Boris Yeltsin introduced Vladimir Putin as his surprise successor.
But the KGB past of Russia's incoming head of state raised alarm bells over the future of the country's nascent freedoms. "It was clear that for people like us, it wouldn't promise anything good," Borogan told Newsweek.
A quarter of a century later, Putin's crackdown on dissent is so complete that prison terms can await those whose posts on social media platforms like Telegram and VKontakte are deemed to discredit his full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Soldatov and Borogan's book Our Dear Friends In Moscow outlines a trajectory from a freer Russia at the start of Putin's rule to a country in which the president holds captive the opinion of the majority and how some former colleagues ended up toeing the Kremlin line.
The book's subheading, "The Inside Story of a Broken Generation," outlines Putin's growing grip on public discourse, especially over the war he started. "People who are against this invasion remain silent because of fear," Soldatov told Newsweek.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is pictured on June 30, 2025, in Moscow, Russia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is pictured on June 30, 2025, in Moscow, Russia.
Getty Images
Moscow Theater Siege—Putin's Key Moment
When Soldatov and Borogan started out in their early 20s working for newspapers like Sevodnya, Izvestia, and as founders of Russian secret services watchdog Agentura, they were a generation younger than those who had been previously in the industry.
Progress was swift in a freewheeling media climate far removed from the restrictions of the Soviet era, but soon after assuming the presidency in 2000, Putin started turning the screw. Our Dear Friends In Moscow describes how this meant they had to move from publication to publication, sometimes due to editors bowing to state demands to toe the new party line, other times for work that agitated the security services.
But one event that marked Putin's intentions to control public opinion was the storming of Moscow's Dubrovka Theater on 23 October 2002 by Chechen militants who took hostage 912 people watching the musical "Nord-Ost."
Russian investigate journalist Andrei Soldatov.
Russian investigate journalist Andrei Soldatov.
Supplied by PublicAffairs
Russian security services released sleeping gas into the building before storming. All 40 hostage takers died, but so did over 130 hostages, largely because of the gas, and the botched operation was condemned.
Putin wanted to show himself as a president who could deal with terrorists in a different way to Yeltsin, the man who anointed him, said Soldatov.
"Putin wanted to be seen as a strong leader and much more brutal and decisive— not like Yeltsin," he said, "when journalists started writing critical things about the way the situation was handled, he got really furious."
Following the siege, Putin accused journalists of being traitors, and that was when Soldatov and Borogan faced their first FSB investigation. Restrictions grew, and by the end of the first decade, Soldatov said most newspapers had reduced or completely shut down their investigative departments. Threats against journalists grew, sending a chilling message to those who wrote about Russian security services.
This image from 26 October 2003, shows a memorial of those who died at the Dubrokva theater in Moscow a year earlier when Chechen commanders took hundreds hostage.
This image from 26 October 2003, shows a memorial of those who died at the Dubrokva theater in Moscow a year earlier when Chechen commanders took hundreds hostage.Putin's Social Contract
Post-Soviet era economic turbulence caused financial hardship for much of the Russian population who felt "deceived by the West" that new democracy did not mean wealth, as they thought they had been promised, Borogan said.
This was something Putin was able to exploit when he came to power. "He said, 'We will be strong. We would not be together with the West, which has always been against us, and I will resurrect our pride,'" said Borogan. "The population was not brainwashed completely, Putin found their weak spot."
The price of Russia's most lucrative export boomed and as a barrel of oil, peaking at $150 per in July 2008 before the global financial crisis, people linked this burgeoning affluence to Putin.
"The initial social contract was very simple," said Soldatov. The public gave up public freedoms and participation in any political activities, in return for prosperity, stability and security.
But Putin also exploited the desire among people in Russia to get their pride back as a superpower. Soldatov said that along this path was the 2008 war in Georgia, which showed the Russian army would not be humiliated anymore. The illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 inflated that sense of pride.
Since then, Putin has reintroduced an element of fear. A decade ago, opposing the Kremlin was only a problem for political actors—now almost every strata of Russian society is in danger, including businessmen and government workers, he said.
Fear Is Omnipresent
Putin exerted his control over TV channels and restrictions on other media are so tight that looking at posts or independent media in public can be risky. "Fear is omnipresent," Borogan said.
"Most people in Russia who oppose the invasion of Ukraine remain silent because of this fear," said Soldatov.
"The Kremlin is skillful at reminding people of what it was like under Stalin, " said Soldatov," sometimes they use intentionally the rhetoric which was used under Stalin to remind people of what the Kremlin is capable of doing."
Russian investigative journalist Irina Borogan.
Russian investigative journalist Irina Borogan.
Supplied by PublicAffairs
An example of this is the social media posts of former president Dmitry Medvedev, who regularly rails against the West and boasts of Russia's nuclear capabilities.
"It gives a strong message to the Russian audience because they immediately recognize the wording."
In June 2022, the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs placed Soldatov on the federal wanted list, charged with spreading "fake news" about the Russian Army linked to his reporting on the faulty intelligence that preceded the invasion.
As Russia's media was strangled during Putin's rule, which included a stint as prime minister between 2008 and 2012, it became more difficult for Soldatov and Borogan to work in Moscow, and they left the country. Meanwhile, their media colleagues they were close to at the start of the century became more aligned with the Kremlin's position.
One of them, Zhenya Baranov, was a presenter for propaganda outlet Channel 1, which pushes Kremlin rhetoric about Nazis in Ukraine. Another, Olga Lyubimova, rose to become culture minister.
A third, Petya Akapov referred in an op-ed on RIA Novosti to Putin's invasion as "Russia is restoring its historical completeness" and described the president's actions as "the solution of the Ukrainian question."
These former comrades were ambitious and wanted to play a significant role in Russian politics and so decided that the only way to achieve anything is to work for the dictator, said Soldatov, adding, they believe "if you decided to oppose him, you become an outsider, a maverick—like us who are forced to live in exile."