Denys Shtilierman
@DenShtilierman
The Kremlin, realizing just how dire its situation is, has stepped up the activities of its “opposition figures.” Yashin’s interview, Andrey Melnichenko’s article for The Economist, and similar moves are coordinated actions aimed solely at convincing Europe and the entire Western world that Russia’s defeat is dangerous.
The main argument plays on the West’s greatest fear: that if Russia loses, it will break up into dozens of republics led by criminal gangs with access to nuclear weapons. And the main message is a literal call to put pressure not on the aggressor, but on the victim: “We must put pressure on Ukraine so that it stops attacking Russia and sits down at the negotiating table.”
And the biggest problem with all of this is the Western media’s fascination with Russia. Whether out of naivety, bribery, or simply incompetence, many major media outlets portray Russian billionaire Melnichenko and Russian “opposition figures” as if they were truly standing up to the Kremlin.
But all it takes is a little common sense — and everything falls into place. The West itself has declared that Russia is a totalitarian country. The West has long equated Putin with Kim Jong Un. So why is it suddenly believed that a genuine opposition could emerge and operate freely within such a system?
Against this backdrop, figures like Yashin or Kara-Murza look incredibly out of place. People who opposed the Kremlin sat quietly in Russian prison, showing no signs of torture and not even losing weight, and were then conveniently exchanged and carefully transported to the West — to promote those very same narratives of Putin’s, only now from European platforms. But now things in Russia are so bad that they have to dust off all their “reserves” and deploy “opposition figures” in a coordinated information operation. Because everyone in the Kremlin understands: if the war isn’t stopped immediately, the empire will fall.
The conclusion is simple. There is no such thing as a “good Russia.” There is only a single imperial machine that, in moments of weakness, simply changes its tools: if it failed to intimidate with missiles, it will try to intimidate with “collapse” and “nuclear chaos” through the mouths of its systemic “opposition figures.”
6:19 AM · Jul 12, 2026 · 26K Views
https://x.com/DenShtilierman/status/2076265212198445486
