The bombing of a top Russian military officer has put a damper on Vladimir Putin’s desperate popularity push.
A targeted bombing killed a Russian Defense Ministry serviceman in Russian-occupied Crimea at around 10 a.m. local time on Thursday morning, according to The Moscow Times.
The Federal Security Service (FSB) said that an explosive device was hidden inside a trash can on a street in western Sevastopol, which is home to the Russian Black Sea Fleet. It was detonated when the officer, whom officials did not identify, walked by, the outlet reported.
The attack occurred amid Putin’s efforts to boost his popularity as he sheds his wartime isolation in favor of appearing publicly across Russian territory.
The FSB announced that they had arrested a 32-year-old Russian woman who it said acted on behalf of Ukrainian special services.
“Investigators established that she acted on instructions from Ukrainian special services and showed no remorse,” the Kremlin-installed governor of Sevastopol, Mikahil Razvozhayev, said.
Unverified reporting from the Russian independent outlet Ostorozhno Novosti claimed to identify the woman as Margarita Reutt, who had previously been fined by a court in August 2025 for publicly “discrediting” the Russian military while on board a train.
Over the last three weeks, the Russian president, 73, has ditched his previous isolationist tendencies to embark on a tour of Russia, visiting six cities, three of them in Siberia.
The effort is a desperate measure to boost his popularity amid poor poll numbers. Putin’s approval is at its lowest point since the war began in 2022, at 66 percent, according to The Times.
“For a long time now, [Putin’s] own approval rating has been the primary indicator of the state of affairs in the country for him,” exiled Russian journalist Farida Rustamova told the British newspaper.
“It is the system’s pulse, and the entire machine operates to sustain that rating. It is unlikely that he is overly concerned about his personal standing at this very moment, yet the system is so fixated on him as an individual that he is compelled to keep it running at peak performance,” Rustamova continued. “He genuinely believes that his public appearances reassure people. It’s long been proven [by opinion polls] that they don’t, but he believes it.”
Putin had largely remained out of the spotlight over fears of Ukrainian drones and assassination attempts, but has crawled out of his shell to boost the Kremlin’s standing in the eyes of his people.
His arrival in some cities has led to lower energy prices, while in others it has sparked beautification efforts to welcome his presence.
“They’re practically rebuilding the city in three days,” one person from Siberia’s largest city, Novosibirsk, wrote on social media, according to the Times. “Damn, I wish he’d visit more often; maybe then we’d see a whole new city built in a year.”
