A State Duma deputy from Russia’s Communist Party (KPRF), Vyacheslav Markhayev, has warned that Russia is “on the brink of a social explosion,” for which “the entrenched leadership will bear full responsibility.”

Utility rates keep rising while Soviet-era infrastructure crumbles, Markhayev wrote in his Telegram channel — “funds are going not toward repairing networks, but toward yachts, palaces, and foreign assets.” In 35 years, he said, “not a single successful reform has been carried out, yet oligarchs keep multiplying and growing richer — and this is in the fifth year of the special military operation”

Turning to the subject of the SVO, which I have long avoided, I am compelled to note: corruption scandals are compounding the ongoing losses of the most active and reproductively capable segment of the population due to ineffective leadership. Attacks on our cities do not stop; their geography is expanding; the West is increasing drone deliveries, and we are forced to endure. Russia’s Presidential Administration is already declaring that the goals of denazification and demilitarization of Ukraine effectively amount to nothing more than new territories, not the whole country. If this situation continues, a social explosion and chaos become more likely. The West will inevitably exploit that to finish off what remains of Russian statehood.

Markhayev demanded that utility rate increases be halted, that officials be held genuinely accountable for failing to comply with laws and direct presidential orders, and that a “clear, public plan for ending the SVO, based on Russia’s national interests” be presented.

Renat Suleymanov, another State Duma deputy from the KPRF, had previously made similar statements, saying that “the earliest possible end to the SVO is simply necessary” because the economy would not withstand a prolonged continuation of the fighting.