Riots in Moscow... Russian Citizens TURN Against Putin

The Military Show

Become a Member Today and Unlock EXCLUSIVE Videos: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKfak8fBm_Lhy4eX9UKxEpA/join  On October 4, 2026, an authorized Communist Party (KPRF) rally in Moscow commemorating the 1993 constitutional crisis erupted into major anti-government protests, with crowds chanting "Down with the Tsar!" and demanding freedom for political prisoners. Following a heavily manipulated September State Duma election that disqualified the pro-peace Yabloko party and awarded United Russia a record supermajority, mounting anger over 51% lost oil refining capacity and sweeping healthcare budget cuts is spilling onto Russian streets. Discover how domestic economic crisis and political suppression are threatening Kremlin stability.  ⏱️ CHAPTERS: 00:00 - The October 4 Moscow Rally: Commemoration Turned Anti-Putin Riot 02:53 - State Duma Election Fraud & The Disfranchisement of Yabloko 08:27 - Economic Infrastructure Breakdown: Refinery Interdiction & The Fuel Crisis 11:11 - Fiscal Sacrifice: War Budget Expansion & Severe Social Spending Cuts 12:50 - Historical Parallels: The 1993 Constitutional Crisis & Police Crackdowns 15:47 - Zyuganov's 1917 Warning & Systemic Opposition Unraveling  Support us directly as we bring you independent, up-to-date reporting on military news and global conflicts by clicking here: https://www.youtube.com/@TheMilitaryShow/join  #militarystrategy #militarydevelopments #militaryanalysis #themilitaryshow  SOURCES: https://pastes.io/FUBErvOS

Transcript

00:01Down with the Tsar! Down with the Tsar!

00:04That's the chant that rang through the streets of Moscow

00:07as protesters gathered to let Putin know their thoughts about his corrupt regime

00:12and the war that he has forced down Russian throats.

00:17There are riots in Moscow. Putin's own people have turned against him

00:22and we may be on the verge of witnessing a seismic shock in Russian politics.

00:26On October 4th, Russia's Communist Party held a large rally,

00:31ostensibly to commemorate the events of Russia's 1993 constitutional crisis.

00:36But really, this was all about thousands of people coming together to express their anger at Putin

00:42and the policies that have led Russia into a black hole.

00:46The Moscow Times reports that an estimated 2,000 people gathered for the memorial,

00:51which is held annually to honour those killed in the 1993 crisis.

00:55It wasn't long before those gathered decided to vent their frustrations about their leader.

01:01Down with the Tsar! became a rallying cry.

01:04Other protesters delivered their own slogans.

01:07Freedom for political prisoners was another chant,

01:10highlighting the anger those in attendance feel about Putin's suppression of any and all opposition to his rule.

01:17For fair elections was another slogan,

01:20timely delivered in the wake of what many believe to be a sham State Duma election period.

01:25What started as a memorial descended into pure anger.

01:30White-hot rage directed at a man who has crippled his own country due to his obsession with the war

01:35in Ukraine.

01:36And in a moment we're going to explain all of the reasons why this protest turned into a riot that

01:41the Kremlin struggled to contain.

01:43But first, everything you see here is researched, verified and produced by real people.

01:49If you value that, subscribe and comment below.

01:52And consider becoming a member for access to exclusive content.

01:56Police descended on the protest, of course.

01:59Arrests were made and the Kremlin did its best to shut down an event that had spiralled out of control

02:05from Putin's perspective.

02:07But here's the craziest thing.

02:09It was the Kremlin that approved this gathering in the first place.

02:13Protests like these don't just happen in Russia, as the Kremlin wants to keep tight control over any public dissent.

02:19Putin's lackeys signed off on the Communist Party gathering because they believed it would just be a memorial and nothing

02:26more.

02:27After all, this is the Communist Party we're talking about.

02:30While technically an opponent of Putin's United Russia Party, they're usually opposition in name only.

02:37When push comes to shove, the Communist Party will rubber stamp whatever policies Putin puts forward.

02:43That's what makes this protest so big.

02:45What started as an approved event became something that the Kremlin couldn't handle.

02:51And what this shows us is that for all of his claims of control, Putin no longer has his finger

02:56on the pulse of the Russian people.

02:58If he did, he might have seen this riot coming.

03:02After all, there are plenty of reasons why what was supposed to be a memorial became a riot.

03:07We'll start with Russia's recent elections.

03:10Held in September, the State Duma elections wound up delivering a record State Duma majority to United Russia.

03:17Putin's favoured party won more seats in the lower house of the State Duma than it's ever won before, taking

03:23349 of the 450 available seats.

03:27The previous record was set in 2016 when United Russia took 343 seats.

03:32And to the outside observer, who has no idea how Russian elections actually work, this result would make it look

03:38like there is mass approval for Putin and his policies among the Russian people.

03:42Putin even managed to use the elections to make a political statement about the war in Ukraine.

03:47For the first time ever, Ukraine war veterans ran for office and won seats, taking 46 of those available.

03:53These are Russia's new elite, Putin declared in the wake of the elections.

03:58This is excellent. The experience of our heroes is in high demand.

04:02The results of the vote have clearly confirmed this, Putin lackey Dmitry Peskov said as he tried to force the

04:08idea that Russia's veterans are hailed as heroes in their own country.

04:12There is just one major problem with all of this United Russia back patting. It's all a sham.

04:17There was nothing democratic about the September State Duma elections and it means nothing that the incumbent party has won

04:25by a landslide.

04:27Putin's cronies were working behind the scenes the entire way to make it seem as though support for Putin is

04:32stronger than it's ever been before.

04:34In a September 24th video, TLDR News dug deeper into the State Duma elections, showcasing the sheer scale of electoral

04:41fraud that went on to create Putin's little everybody loves me fairy tale.

04:47For a start, the Kremlin managed to ban the only party that might have offered some true opposition from even

04:53fielding candidates for the election.

04:55Ybloko, which is Russian for Apple, is Russia's oldest liberal party and it typically argues for democratic reforms and peaceful

05:03relations with the West.

05:04Putin couldn't have that. He went through the courts that he controlled to do something about this threat to his

05:10power base.

05:11Ybloko candidates were banned from standing just a month before the elections were to take place, based on the results

05:18of a court case that was engineered to take the party out of contention.

05:21This matters because of the impact that it had on the numbers.

05:26In the past, Ybloko candidates were allowed to run, likely because they pulled in about 2% of the vote,

05:31TLDR News reports.

05:33They were useful, a way for the Kremlin to gauge anti-Putin sentiment.

05:37The problem in 2026 is that anti-Putin sentiment is far higher now than it's ever been before.

05:43Polls leading up to the September elections put Ybloko's support in the double digits.

05:48So they were out.

05:49The eventual results showed that the United Russia Party won 58% of the vote from a turnout of 59

05:56% of the Russian population.

05:58But here's where the numbers come into play.

06:00When examining each party's share of the vote against turnout in each constituency that voted, you see something strange.

06:07There is a strong correlation between turnout and the United Russia vote share, TLDR News reports.

06:13That simply doesn't happen in legitimate elections.

06:17Uniformity in voting patterns related to turnout is rare, to the point of being almost impossible.

06:23And yet in each constituency that was examined, we see the same pattern.

06:27A high turnout leads to a high United Russia vote share.

06:30This is the sham.

06:32The reality, TLDR News says, is that United Russia likely won 35% of the vote from a turnout of

06:3840% of the Russian population.

06:40That would put the Communist Party, which, don't forget, held the protest, at a vote share of 25%.

06:46This roughly aligns with unofficial polls, i.e. polls that didn't have Kremlin backing ahead of the election.

06:53And in the polls where Yubloco was included before its expulsion from the elections, the party was polling at about

06:5825% of the vote.

07:00United Russia would have still gotten about a third of the vote if Russia's State Duma elections were legitimate.

07:05But we wouldn't see anything like the supermajority we see now.

07:09Both Yubloco and the Communist Party would have been represented much more in the State Duma.

07:14For the latter, this election, if carried out properly, could have represented a pathway to becoming more than a rubber

07:20stamping party for Putin.

07:22Which brings us back to the October 4th protests.

07:25What we've just seen in those protests is the supporters of a party that has been railroaded into subservience by

07:31an unfair system.

07:32The September elections show just how much the Kremlin is willing to cheat on behalf of United Russia and fragile

07:38Putin.

07:38As foreign policy puts it, these sham elections have essentially closed the door on any legitimate parliamentary debate about Putin

07:46and his policies.

07:47The authoritarian is working to become a true dictator.

07:51With no political avenue for their discontent, the 2,000 Communist Party supporters who gathered in Moscow on October 4th

07:58chose another road.

08:00Get the Kremlin to approve a gathering that will become a protest, ensuring that dissenting voices are still heard, no

08:07matter what Putin tries to do.

08:08Though the State Duma elections were the likely catalyst for the protests and riots in Moscow, they weren't the only

08:14reason why thousands of people broke out in chants of down with the Tsar.

08:18A wellspring of discontent has just bubbled over, as protesters are as angry about the state of Russia right now

08:25as they are about a sham election.

08:27We're about to dig deeper, but before we do, this is a reminder that you're watching The Military Show.

08:32If you're getting insight from our video, don't forget to subscribe and enable notifications so you don't miss what we

08:38have coming next.

08:40In its report on the Moscow protests, AP News noted that they have happened against a backdrop of intensified drone

08:46attacks carried out by Ukraine inside Russian territory.

08:49Those attacks, which often target oil refineries, have led to a fuel shortage and massive disruptions to the average Russian's

08:56life, the outlet points out.

08:58It isn't wrong on either count.

09:00In late August, Euronews reported that seven out of every ten Russian gas stations had run out of fuel, leading

09:07to massive queues at the pumps.

09:09This isn't anything new for Russia in 2026.

09:12Ever since the spring, Ukraine's refinery and logistics strikes have cut off the flow of gasoline and diesel into Russian

09:18regions.

09:19This shortage isn't likely to change any time soon either.

09:22Russia is now being forced to buy what is supposed to be one of the country's own products from other

09:27nations.

09:27Putin has gotten so desperate that he's even leaning on countries that are ostensibly opposed to what Russia is doing

09:34in Ukraine.

09:34On October 6th, Ukraine accused South Korea of exporting over 176,000 tons of fuel to Russia through July and

09:43August,

09:43with South Korea accounting for 31% of Russian fuel imports in the latter month.

09:48This is desperation on Russia's part.

09:50But for as angry as Ukraine will be over South Korea's alleged actions, which undermine the Ukrainian strategy of cutting

09:57off Russian fuel supplies,

09:59it isn't stopping its strikes.

10:00According to PBS, Ukraine now claims to have taken out 51% of Russia's oil refining capacity with its drone

10:07strikes.

10:08We're also seeing an intensification of Ukraine's aerial assaults, as was the case on October 6th,

10:14when news broke of Ukraine unleashing a 1,750 drone barrage all over Russia.

10:20If you're the average Russian right now, you're feeling all of this.

10:23There's no fuel which impacts everything from your job to the costs of goods at the local markets.

10:29Ukraine's drone strikes are a near daily occurrence, which leaves you scared and angry.

10:34Putin promised this would never happen.

10:37The so-called special military operation was meant to be over years ago,

10:41with Ukraine never landing a strike on Russia.

10:44Now those strikes happen all the time, and nowhere in Russia is safe from Ukraine's drones.

10:50That seems like a good enough reason to protest to us.

10:53And it leads us to another reason for what we saw in Moscow on October 4th,

10:57which is that Russians are getting sick of Putin's obsession with his war.

11:02All of this pain could be over if Putin admitted that he has dragged his country into a painful conflict.

11:07Pushing for peace would go a long way toward quelling the anger that is leading to protests and riots.

11:12But Putin won't do that.

11:13He's going in the opposite direction, as proven by how he is now pulling money away from vital public services

11:19so he can continue to fund his invasion.

11:22According to the latest Kremlin budget, invasion spending is going up by a third,

11:27while the Kremlin cuts healthcare spending in Russia.

11:29The New Voice of Ukraine reports that war spending now accounts for 40% of the entire Russian budget.

11:35The sacrifice for keeping that war spending going is that 8 of 11 federal healthcare development projects

11:41have received spending cuts or have been outright axed by the Kremlin, the outlet says.

11:47Among them is a project to modernize Russia's primary healthcare clinics, which has seen its budget slashed by 52%.

11:53Other cuts include around $1.2 billion taken away from the Cancer Diseases Project,

11:59which would pay for equipment used by oncology centres and medicine for cancer patients.

12:04Medusa adds more in a September 29th report, noting that Russian spending in the social policy category will drop by

12:107%.

12:11That's money taken away from things like pensions, maternity benefits and payments made to war veterans.

12:17Russia is also going to spend 6% less on education and 7.4% less on national economy projects,

12:25such as road building and agricultural subsidies.

12:28It's as though Putin has taken a handful of salt and rubbed it into the open wound of Russian society.

12:33As fuel shortages put Russians on the brink, Putin is now letting everybody know that helping them isn't the priority.

12:40Public health be damned. There's a war to be fought.

12:43Who needs healthcare when Putin is so determined to kill hundreds of thousands of his own people in Ukraine anyway?

12:51Putin is making it clear to his people that they come second to what he wants.

12:55And what he wants is Ukraine, not a healthy Russia.

12:58It's no wonder that people are chanting down with the Tsar when that wannabe Tsar is crippling Russia.

13:04Before we move on, it's worth coming back to what the October 4th gathering was supposed to be about before

13:08it turned into a riot.

13:09There's a certain amount of symbolism there.

13:11The 1993 constitutional crisis was a political standoff between the Russian parliament and the then-president Boris Yeltsin.

13:20Already we're seeing a small parallel between that crisis and October 4th.

13:24The crisis was sparked when Yeltsin attempted to dissolve the Russian legislature,

13:28despite not having the authority to do so.

13:31Again, another parallel.

13:32A leader who does whatever he wants, despite procedure, angering politicians.

13:38Russia's military was brought in to resolve the standoff, resulting in over 150 people being killed and hundreds more being

13:44injured,

13:45leading to the 1993 constitutional crisis being dubbed Black October in Russia.

13:50A Communist Party gathering to mark the events of that day turned into a protest against the man who holds

13:56all of the power

13:57is a reminder that not all Russians are willing to back down in the face of their leader.

14:02What better motivation to do so than one of the darkest days in Russia's recent history?

14:07Of course, the Kremlin had to respond to the events of October 4th.

14:11There was no way that Putin was going to allow a large protest to devolve into a riot with no

14:16recourse.

14:17Thankfully, Putin didn't decide to kill people for their dissent this time.

14:21Moscow's response was to send armed police into the fray, where they meted out their own brand of brutality.

14:28By the end of the protest, around 60 people had been arrested.

14:32Many of these arrests were far from peaceful.

14:34TVP World reports that at least one protester was forced to the ground where he was kicked by police officers.

14:40Another protester, this time a woman, had her hair pulled by police.

14:44Most of those detained were young people, the outlet adds, with the arrests happening in two waves.

14:50In the first wave, 26 members of the Communist Party were taken away.

14:54The second saw authorities arrest about 30 members of the Yabloko Party we mentioned earlier.

14:59The presence of both parties at the protest will give Putin some concerns.

15:04Remember what we said about Russia's elections earlier.

15:06Each party was polling at about 25% of the vote before the September sham.

15:10We may be seeing a team-up starting to take root, as Yabloko and the Communist Party realise that they

15:16are stronger together than they are apart.

15:18October 4th also marks the highest number of arrests made at a Communist Party rally since Putin launched his Ukraine

15:24invasion.

15:25If there is one thing we can tell you from all of this, it's that tensions are rising in Russia.

15:31Putin might have engineered a fake election that makes it seem like support for him and his favoured party is

15:36higher than ever, but the reality is far different.

15:39As for the Communist Party, it's starting to show signs that it may want to become more than the rubber

15:45stamp, as we called them earlier.

15:46This protest is a sign of that, but if we go back a few months, we'll see another sign.

15:51Back in April, the party's leader, Gennady Zyuganov, issued a stark warning during a plenary session of the State Duma.

15:58After declaring that his party is doing everything that it can to support Putin and his policies,

16:03Zyuganov then delivered a harsh takedown of the Russian government.

16:06If you, the government, do not urgently adopt financial, economic and other measures by autumn, a repeat of what happened

16:12in 1917 awaits us.

16:14We don't have the right to repeat that. Let's take some decisions, the Communist Party leader said of the Russian

16:19government.

16:20There's some clever doublespeak going on here.

16:23Zyuganov claimed support for Putin, but then attacked the government that Putin has put in place to do whatever he

16:29wants it to do.

16:30This was an attack on Putin, despite being dressed up as a verbal evisceration of the government, and it was

16:36made in the State Duma.

16:37The same State Duma that has now become one of the reasons why the Communist Party just erupted in protest.

16:43What all of this should show Putin is that the Russian people simply don't support him the way he wants

16:49to pretend.

16:50In the summer, the Kyiv Post reported that Putin's approval rating had dropped five points to 66%, per a poll

16:58carried out by the Public Opinion Foundation.

17:00That's the steepest decline we've seen since the beginning of the Ukraine invasion, and it comes from a pollster that

17:07is state-backed and prone to manipulating its results to make them seem much better than they are.

17:13Putin's reality now is that his grip on power is weakening as his people turn against him.

17:18Not all are doing so publicly, as the 2,000 or so who turned out on October 4th.

17:24Some will even claim to support Putin, even as they secretly hate everything that he's doing.

17:28But the tide is turning, as there are too many factors in play to enable Putin to enjoy the level

17:34of support he wants.

17:36Putin's support from Russia's political and economic elite is crumbling.

17:40Beyond party leaders calling him out in the State Duma, Putin is being forced to watch as Russia's oligarchs funnel

17:46billions of dollars out of the country,

17:48so he can't get his dirty mitts on it.

17:50Russia is on the brink of an economic disaster, helped along by Ukraine's non-stop strikes and Putin's war-obsessed

17:58policies.

17:58Despite Putin's attempts to control Russia's information environment, pictures and videos covering Ukrainian strikes spread across social media platforms like

18:07Wildfire.

18:08Bit by bit, Putin's grip is weakening.

18:11Open protests in the streets and chants of down with the Tsar are just another example of the tide that

18:16is turning inside Russia.

18:18The Kremlin can hold as many sham elections as it wants.

18:21The people are still finding ways to make their voices heard.

18:24And those voices are decrying a leader who seems hell-bent on destroying his own country.

18:29The pressure is mounting.

18:31And come the winter, Putin will have to face even more anger over his warmongering.

18:37Why?

18:37Because Ukraine is planning to turn Russia's oldest ally, General Winter, against him.

18:42If you want to find out what Ukraine has in store for Russia this winter, we have the perfect video

18:47waiting for you to watch.

18:49But before you go, if real, human-made military reporting matters to you, subscribe and tell us what you think

18:56below.

18:56You can also become a member for exclusive content while directly supporting the work behind this channel.

19:02And thank you, as always, for watching.

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