“We surrender our weapons, we surrender our country!”, Pavel Gubarev, a pro-Moscow activist in part of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region controlled by Moscow, posted on Sunday, raging against the prospect of the conflict being “frozen” along current lines.
However, the so-called ‘Z-patriots’ – named after a symbol Russian forces in Ukraine paint on their vehicles - must conform to certain rules and do not ultimately pose a threat to Putin, three people close to the Kremlin said. They will be expected to toe the line if and when the moment comes to make peace, the people said.
Analysts say that by arguing for the war to continue, as U.S. President Donald Trump and some Western European leaders push for a deal, the Z-patriots can sometimes go too far for the Kremlin’s liking by riling up the public and creating expectations of a more ambitious battlefield campaign.
Stanovaya, whom the Russian authorities last year designated a “foreign agent,“ noted that some Z-patriots have called on the Russian army to take the Ukrainian cities of Kyiv and Odesa and even attack Poland. Such targets go well beyond what Putin, who has claimed four Ukrainian regions as part of Russia - in addition to Crimea - has stated as Russia’s war aims.
The Kremlin did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story.
But they must tread carefully.
The Kremlin has rejected as an “absolute lie” the suggestion that Putin had Prigozhin killed in revenge for his mutiny. It says it does not interfere in court cases, something critics contest.
But Z-patriots who make too much of a fuss about any eventual peace deal risk being purged, said the three sources, who, like others in this story, spoke on condition of anonymity given the matter’s sensitivity.
“It will be like a light switch is being flicked,“ the source said.
After Putin called for direct peace talks in Istanbul with Ukraine at a Kremlin news conference on Sunday, some ultra-nationalists were quick to voice their concerns.
“Our war will continue until the complete liberation of Novorossiya and Malorossiya,“ Konstantin Malofeyev, a nationalist tycoon who is married to a senior government official reporting directly to Putin, wrote in his blog on Monday, using terms that hark back to the Russian Empire and describe a swath of modern-day Ukraine once ruled by the Tsars.
Meanwhile Dmitry Medvedev, a former Russian president who is currently deputy chairman of the Security Council and who once styled himself as a liberal pro-Western moderniser, took to X on Saturday to say a truce would offer the Ukrainian army “respite”.
One of the sources said that bellicose pronouncements by nationalists like Malofeyev – though sincere and not scripted – are one way of tracking whether the Kremlin is really close to peace in Ukraine or not.
The authorities have made two rules very obvious: don’t criticise Putin personally or the army’s top brass.
After accusing Putin and the army top brass of failure in Ukraine, Girkin, a former FSB officer and battlefield commander wanted for a war crime in the West, was convicted of inciting extremism in 2024 and handed a four-year jail term.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the Wagner mercenary group, took his men on an abortive and bloody march on Moscow in June 23 to try to oust the then defence minister and strayed into personal criticism of Putin.
‘THE PARTY OF WAR’
Outspoken in the war’s early stages, the Kremlin and the Defence Ministry later invited many of them to briefings to try to co-opt them. Some now re-publish Defence Ministry press releases along with their own analysis; others remain more outspoken.
War hawks include figures linked to the Defence Ministry, intelligence agencies, law enforcement agencies and individuals who have been or remain close to Putin.
A fourth source inside Russia said the desire to prolong the war in some circles was driven by a domestic pressure inside the system on Putin to definitively settle what they see as Russia’s Ukraine problem.
“Without radical external changes, Putin is committed to ending the war on his own terms,“ she said referring to his stated territorial and security goals in Ukraine. “He’s ready to wage war for years or to achieve his aims in a different way.”
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