Context: He is a Russian who live in France and is known for his videos comparing Russian and French culture. At the start of the the invasion in 2022, he bought on to western propaganda and fled Russia in a panic (he happened to be there at the time) and didn’t return for 2 years. He finally returned to Russia recently and just published this video a few hours ago in which he give a pretty fair account of how Russia is really doing 2 years later.

The video is in french but the auto subtitles work decently enough.

I think this is interesting for 2 reasons:

1. This is a big shift in opinion for him, back in 2022 he was firmly on Ukraine’s side and in favor of the economic sanctions and now there he is telling to his audience that everyone who lost their mind about the sanctions were wrong and that Russia is actually doing even better than before the sanctions.

2. He has a massive audience (>2M subscribers), this is the first time I see such a huge internet personality openly acknowledging the real economic situation in Russia, from a guy who is literally known for being Russian too.

He has 2 or 3 weird takes but otherwise the video is decently fair and nuanced.