'New People': Russia's Kremlin-made spoiler party is now its second most popular
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New People, created by the Kremlin as a controlled outlet for dissent, has doubled its support to 13.4% as internet shutdowns fuel frustration with the Russian state.
A Russian political party created in 2020 as a Kremlin-sanctioned outlet for protest votes has risen to second place in official polling, as internet shutdowns and wartime frustration push Russians toward the only political option that will even remotely criticise the state.
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New People now commands 13.4% support according to VTsIOM, Russia's state-backed polling centre — double the 6.6% it recorded a year ago.
The conservative Communist Party trails at 10.9% and the Liberal Democratic Party — led by ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky until his death in 2022 — at 10.1%.
For the first time, the gap between New People and the old systemic opposition parties has reached 2.5 percentage points.
Support for United Russia, de facto led by Russian President Vladimir Putin, has fallen from 36% to 27.7% since April 2024.
Putin's own approval rating stood at 65.6% in data published on 24 April — the lowest recorded since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began.
VTsIOM is a state-run institution, and its data cannot be independently verified. Furthermore, wartime censorship creates strong incentives for respondents to give socially acceptable answers.
Yet political commentator Andrey Pertsev told Euronews that VTsIOM had no obvious reason to inflate New People's numbers, arguing that the party's real support may be higher than published figures suggest.
Internet restrictions as a catalyst
Russian authorities began restricting digital platforms systematically after the invasion. Facebook and Instagram were blocked in spring 2022.
YouTube was throttled in August 2024. By March, WhatsApp and Telegram — each used by more than 90 million people in Russia — had become almost entirely inaccessible.
According to 2024 data from Mediascope, Telegram reached 74% of Russians aged 12 and over every month, and every second Russian used it daily. For many users, it functioned as a workplace tool, an advertising platform and a primary news source.
Frustration peaked in March, when mobile internet disappeared from central Moscow for three weeks. Only a Kremlin-approved whitelist of sites — large banks, the Yandex ecosystem and state media — remained accessible.
Moscow residents could no longer call taxis or pay by card. Public toilets stopped working because payment required internet access. The newspaper Kommersant reported the city's economy lost between 3 billion and 5 billion rubles (€35 million and €60 million) in the first five days alone.
New People moved quickly into the newly opened space. Deputy Duma speaker and former presidential candidate Vladislav Davankov launched a petition against Telegram restrictions that gathered more than 1 million signatures, although critics noted the voting system allowed multiple submissions.
The party congress in March prominently featured the word "VPN" on stage. Party leader Alexei Nechaev declared, "We came to represent a new Russia — one that wanted to live without bans and coercion, and solve domestic problems."
"We fought against restrictions and prohibitions. Against raising the conscription age. Against total internet control. Against violence," Nechaev stated.
Political analyst Abbas Gallyamov described the party's rise as "a sign of growing anti-system sentiment."
"When there are no fish, even a crayfish counts as fish," he told Euronews. "Because the choice is extremely limited, people choose from what exists. It is not the party's achievement — it is the system's negative rating."
Pertsev said many Russians were searching for a safe way to express dissatisfaction and saw New People as a legalised form of protest.
"Public politics is still a living organism, even if this is not real democracy," he said. "People have problems, and they turn to whoever at least speaks about them and gently criticises state actions."
Diverting sympathy
The nominally centrist New People party was founded on 1 March 2020 in what Pertsev said was a way for the Kremlin to channel protest-minded urban voters into a controllable framework, away from non-systemic opposition.
In the 2021 parliamentary elections, the party won 5.32% of the vote and 13 Duma seats — the first time in 14 years that Russia's parliament was made up of five parties.
The party's founder, Nechaev, is an entrepreneur and the owner of the Faberlic cosmetics company. Russian outlet Meduza previously reported that he approached Yuri Kovalchuk — one of Putin's closest allies — to sponsor and organise the project.
Nechaev has denied any Kremlin connection, despite his party's much more neutral to somewhat supportive stance towards Putin as opposed to its vocal criticism of United Russia.
In a February 2021 New York Times interview, Nechaev outlined three unwritten rules for parties in Russia: do not criticise Putin or his inner circle, do not organise protests, and do not accept foreign funding. New People observes all three, he said.
In practice, New People's parliamentary record has been even more consistently cautious or in favour of the ruling party's decisions.
Its deputies have frequently voted alongside United Russia on measures they later criticised in public. Almost the entire party backed legislation allowing regions to abolish mayoral elections despite championing local democracy.
Vedomosti reported that Davankov helped draft legislation banning gender transition procedures. But it is also uncritical of Moscow's all-out invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
In spring 2022, alongside every other parliamentary party, New People voted in favour of criminal penalties for spreading "fake news" about the Russian army.
During his presidential campaign, Davankov appealed carefully to anti-war voters without ever using the word "war" or calling for Russian troop withdrawal from Ukraine.
The day after the presidential election in March 2024, he congratulated Putin and said "only Putin can win the (war) and achieve sustainable peace." Regional New People branches continue sending aid to Russian troops at the front.
RelatedThe party's nominal liberalism has limits elsewhere too. While defending internet freedom, New People also urged Russians to sign a letter calling on Telegram to open a Russian office — which would require user data to be held on servers accessible to Russian security services.
The party has also cautiously criticised restrictions without naming those responsible. According to The Bell, internet controls are now overseen by the FSB's Second Service — the same branch linked to the poisonings of Russian opposition figures Alexei Navalny and Vladimir Kara-Murza.
What the Kremlin does next
Ahead of the parliamentary elections scheduled for September, New People is building its campaign and could potentially finish second nationally.
Gallyamov said divisions within the Kremlin itself had opened space for the party to manoeuvre within its carefully managed boundaries.
"One side wants Telegram blocked, another says it is a bad idea," he said. "New People sees that disagreement and understands this is an area where limited dissent is permitted."
According to Russian media reports, Kremlin officials are already discussing how to reduce the party's support.
Pertsev said domestic policy managers led by Sergei Kiriyenko might prefer to use New People to replace the increasingly ideological Communist Party as the system's second force.
Whether that happens may depend on whether Putin personally heads United Russia's electoral list.
"If Putin heads the list, United Russia will need to produce extremely high official results," Pertsev said.
"If not, and economic problems worsen, redirecting protest votes toward New People could be presented as safe for the regime," Petsev said, and one way out would be a Kremlin-backed coalition between the two parties, which has reportedly also been discussed.
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