Until 2022, the elite saw Vladimir Putin as a rational leader and called him “the boss.” After the invasion, that view shifted sharply - he is increasingly perceived as an aging autocrat out of touch with reality.
Frustration with Putin (73) is growing inside Russia’s ruling class. The country’s upper echelon and big business have lost respect for him and increasingly use a derisive nickname, “Ded” (“Grandpa”), said Russian economist Alexandra Prokopenko in an interview with Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, citing conversations with members of Russia’s civil and managerial elite.
Prokopenko says that before February 2022 the elite’s attitude toward Putin was different. He was called “the boss” and treated with respect, even as he became more absorbed in history and moved away from the economic agenda. That was seen as a harmless quirk of an aging autocrat, not a threat to the country.
Things changed after he ordered the invasion of Ukraine. The elite did not believe Putin would launch a full-scale war, viewing him as a rational actor capable of weighing risks. When he didn’t, respect gave way to disappointment and mockery.
In private conversations, Prokopenko notes, Putin has picked up the nickname “Ded.” One of her interlocutors put it bluntly: “Grandpa just loves toy soldiers.” The phrase, she says, neatly captures the perception of a leader fascinated with war yet detached from the consequences of his decisions.
The nickname reflects not just the president’s age (Putin is 73) but the sense that he lives in his own reality, treating war as an abstract game rather than a national catastrophe.
Prokopenko also says the elite see Putin as increasingly isolated from what’s really happening. Economic and military information, she argues, reaches him in distorted, sugarcoated form. The system rewards not those who tell the truth, but those who deliver pleasing news.
