Just days after the death in prison of the Russian opposition leader, Alexey Navalny, there was another nearly unnoticed death — of a man from “the other side of the barricades,” from the pro-war patriotic camp.
And yet, despite the two men’s starkly differing significance and values, the demise of both had something similar to say about the impossibility of dissent in 21st-century Russia.
On February 21, the soldier and so-called Z-blogger, Andrey Morozov, committed suicide. He was one of the few ideological proponents of the war with Ukraine and had been a participant since 2014. Not long before his death, Morozov sharply criticized the leadership of the Ministry of Defense and Vladimir Putin personally.
One of his last revelations was a report claiming that Russia’s bloody and ultimately successful “meat grinder” battle for the town of Avdiivka had cost the lives of 16,000 Russian soldiers, more than the official total for Soviet deaths in its Afghan war from 1979-1989.
He was not thanked for the statement. State-funded propagandists turned on him with a vengeance, especially given the report from Defense Ministry Sergei Shoigu to Vladimir Putin claiming that “Avdiivka was taken with minimal casualties.”
Russia does not release casualty numbers. However independent researchers at Mediazona and Meduza have confirmed that the dead and wounded soared after the Avdiivka offensive began in October. This was supported by numerous videos and accounts of lost equipment and troops from Ukrainian sources.
Right from the start, confirmed weekly losses on the Russian side began to rise considerably to around 550-600 from about 360, an increase of more than 50% on previous months. According to US intelligence, from October to December, the irretrievable losses of the Russian army in the Avdiivka–Novopavlovka area of operations, taking into account both killed and wounded, amounted to about 13,000 people. The Ukrainians claimed many more.
The hosts of the “Solovyev LIVE” television channel, Yuliya Vetyazeva and Armen Gasparyan, attacked Morozov, accusing him of “working for the enemy,” and said that his publications fell under the statute “on fakes and slander against the Ministry of Defense.”
In his suicide note, the soldier wrote that he was forced to delete the post about Avdiivka by order of the Army command which in turn was pressured by “political prostitutes led by Vladimir Solovyov.” In his words, he saw death as the only remaining way to continue the fight against the system.
Morozov was not the only Z-blogger to talk of threats and censorship from the Ministry of Defense. Another war propagandist, Sergey Kolyasnikov, complained of intimidation and threats of criminal prosecution for publishing information that could be qualified as “discrediting the use of armed forces.”
However, supposedly secret information still leaks out one way or another, even in an information space controlled by the Kremlin. Websites close to the Ministry of Defense, of course, conceal Russian losses, but nonetheless reach disappointing conclusions. For example, the authors of the Military Review website admitted that “the capture of Avdiivka, like the capture of Bakhmut (Artemovsk), will not in any way affect the overall strategic situation – there are still many other towns like Avdiivka in Donbas.”
Concealing the losses of Russian troops, and primarily the meaninglessness of these losses, is becoming more difficult. Even though Russia formally wins some tactical victories, the result cannot be described as an endorsement of Russian military skill at arms since they are achieved at huge cost using brute force, something that Russian military bloggers and Western media agree on. Given the current slowing in the supply of Western arms to Ukraine, Russian achievements to date look modest.
And the traffic is not just one-way. Ukraine has effectively neutralized the Russian Black Sea Fleet and reopened its grain supply corridors. Russian naval operations are so impinged that they cannot carry out primary tasks like supporting amphibious landing operations or resupplying the army.
What do ordinary Russians make of the continuing bloodbath? According to the latest sociological survey, the end of the war has become the main expectation from the presidential elections in March. However, ending the war for Putin means a return to the peacetime agenda, which means the poverty and corruption so successfully highlighted by Navalny and his team. Moreover, even Russian military analysts write openly that in the future, Russia will face great poverty and social disorder.
In anticipation of such an outcome, the Kremlin is very likely killing not only its political opponents but also “traitors” among former Russian military, such as Russian pilot Maksim Kuzminnov who was murdered in Spain in February after defecting to Ukraine.
Such demonstrative reprisals, as well as intimidation of popular pro-war bloggers, are intended to tighten censorship and block alternative sources of information.
However, no amount of censorship can erase the front-line or quotidian realities that people face. And the gap between them and the propaganda is increasing daily.
Kseniya Kirillova is an analyst focused on Russian society, mentality, propaganda, and foreign policy. The author of numerous articles for CEPA and the Jamestown Foundation, and has also written for the Atlantic Council, Stratfor, and others.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
War Without End
Russia’s Shadow Warfare
CEPA Forum 2025
Explore CEPA’s flagship event.
