Victoria Bonya courtesy of Wikimedia This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
Attribution: Mikhail Popov

The Daily Beast reports:

Ksenia Sobchak, widely known as Russia’s Paris Hilton for getting her start on reality television, has joined celebrity influencer and Playboy cover-star Victoria Bonya in challenging the Kremlin’s propaganda machine.

It was started by Bonya, a former Playboy model who is living the dream of millions of young Russian women and enjoying a lavish life overseas. The former reality TV star … is an influencer with 13.5 million followers on Instagram. … Bonya criticized Putin’s failing policies and went after the Kremlin’s brutal sexists in a video appeal that went viral earlier this month.

More than 30 million people watched Bonya’s 18-minute video message to Putin as she rattled off complaints and told the Russian leader he had “no real understanding” of the plight facing ordinary Russians. “People are dying, business is dying, you are feared,” Bonya said, hedging her criticism by blaming Putin’s henchmen for not giving him “accurate information” on the state of the country. …

The message proved impossible to ignore. Instead of fading away, Bonya’s scathing criticism poured gasoline on the fire, inspiring other women to pile on and vent their anger over Putin’s lies, the Kremlin’s blocking of the internet, and businesses collapsing amid economic woes.

…

A women’s uprising has been a long time coming for Putin….

He arrested women activists and politicians for speaking out; he decriminalized domestic violence, and pardoned wives’ killers. In March, Russia counted 774 women persecuted for political reasons. Moscow-based human rights defender Svetlana Gannushkina says Bonya’s protest is long overdue.

“I am not surprised that women are beginning to protest,” she said. “The situation is so bad that people who have never been involved in any political movements or any human rights activity are incapable of keeping silent any longer.”

 

Slava Ukraine!