Influencer Viktoria Bonya’s 20-million-view video sparked official response and action from Moscow
The Kremlin on Friday denied that President Vladimir Putin was insulated from bad news after a celebrity blogger accused unidentified top officials of not telling Russia’s paramount leader the truth about the country’s problems.
Viktoria Bonya, a social media influencer who is well known inside Russia for her appearances on reality TV shows, said this week that she supported Putin and listed five problems which she said officials were not briefing him on honestly.
Her video was watched more than 20 million times, liked over 1.4 million times and attracted over 75,000 comments on social media.
Asked on Friday about Bonya’s assertion that Putin, who has ruled Russia as either president or prime minister since 1999, is not told the full extent of problems inside Russia, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was wrong.
“No. It is not so,” Peskov said. “Putin is the head of state, and his powers mean he deals with the widest range of issues on the agenda.”
The Kremlin on Thursday took the unusual step of publicly acknowledging sharp criticism from Bonya, saying work was already under way to address a slew of problems she had identified.