In Joseph Stalin's time, Russians used to address their requests to the Kremlin by letter. With Vladimir Putin, they've taken up another habit: publishing videos on social media. In the latest example, the inhabitants of the small village of Lyakhovitsy, on the outskirts of Moscow, have sent the Kremlin leader a video in which they explain why the construction of a new cemetery threatens the drainage and foundations of their homes, and how funeral processions are going to disturb the moral health of their children. "Dear Vladimir Vladimirovich... Please help us solve this problem," they begged in the video.

In the winter of 2023-2024, Russians used the same courtesy formulation of the president's surname to inform him of numerous incidents affecting heating networks. These outages had plunged backwater households into the cold, as well as some less than 50 kilometers from the Kremlin. The regime has encouraged these calls by orchestrating a television program called Direct Line once a year since 2001, allowing people to address Putin openly.

In 2024, for the second successive year, it's set to be combined with the president's traditional Christmas press conference. In 2023, on the eve of the broadcast, over 2 million questions were addressed to him. In the end, Kremlin teams meet the requests in order to convey the following message: local authorities have not been effective, but at the highest level, Putin is listening and taking action.

With the "special military operation" launched by Russia in Ukraine in February 2022, the exercise has taken on another dimension. Over nearly three years of offensive action, videos of soldiers have been setting out their complaints to the "beloved commander-in-chief": "there are unjustified casualties"; "we refuse to fight with assault rifles against tanks"; "generally speaking, it's a complete mess and the men are dying"... With the same fervor that convicts in the 1930s used in their letters to Stalin to get simple "mistakes" corrected, soldiers' wives and mothers are now asking Putin for their loved ones to be spared or for promised bonuses to be paid.

The videos mostly criticize the local authorities but do not call the regime into question, and are shaking up the well-constructed showcase maintained by the Kremlin's television stations. For months now, public television stations have been broadcasting reports on the reconstruction of Mariupol, a major city in eastern Ukraine annexed by Russia but recovered in ruins after the fighting. Residents have appealed to Putin to tell him that, contrary to promises, they have received neither compensation nor a new apartment. Destitute, they've demanded the president "understand and act."

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