When do anti-regime messages persuade people living in authoritarian regimes to update their political attitudes? The literature on authoritarian politics has devoted considerable attention to understanding how pro-regime propaganda affects citizens’ attitudes, but far less to the converse: when and how anti-regime messaging is effective at bursting the regime’s information bubble. We argue that source credibility helps explain why some kinds of anti-regime messages influence opinions while others do not. To illustrate this argument, we draw on observational and experimental survey data collected in Russia after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. We pair time-series data with three survey experiments, which together indicate that messages criticizing the regime and its policies are more persuasive when they come from people with subject-matter expertise.