Russian state television still says the war is going according to plan.

But if you read Russia’s Z-bloggers, the tone is very different.

Z-bloggers are the most loyal and fierce public supporters of the Russian army and its war in Ukraine. They live mostly on Telegram. They post battlefield updates, praise assault units, collect money for drones and military equipment, attack “traitors,” and speak to hundreds of thousands — sometimes millions — of followers.

In 2022, many of them believed the invasion would make them important. They thought they were becoming Russia’s new patriotic elite: the hard men, the truth-tellers, the people who understood war better than soft liberals, corrupt officials, and television generals.

They expected the state to silence their enemies and reward the “real patriots” who stood with the army.

But now they are beginning to discover something very Russian.

The state does not respect them.

It uses them.

And the empire they imagined is not being run by heroic patriots. It is being run by bureaucrats, corrupt officials, frightened commanders, and men who often care more about their own wallets than about victory.

So what happens when Putin’s fiercest war supporters start realizing that the system they defended may betray them too?

Today, we’ll look inside the world of Russia’s Z-bloggers — what they thought they were building, what they are seeing now, and why their panic tells us something important about the state of Putin’s war.

Here’s our roadmap:

• The War Tribe — who Z-bloggers are, where they came from, and why they mattered
• The Imperial Dream — what they wanted from the war, and why Ukraine became the test
• The Drone Panic — why Ukrainian drones broke their confidence
• The Fake Frontline — why official victory reports no longer match reality
• The Mobilization Myth — why “send more men” no longer sounds like a solution
• The Nuclear Fantasy — why desperate people reach for apocalyptic ideas
• The Coming Betrayal — how the state may use these same patriots as scapegoats

The War Tribe

Who Z-bloggers are and what they want?

After 2022, Telegram became the main home of Russia’s war culture. Military correspondents, former officers, nationalist commentators, volunteer fundraisers, anonymous channels — all of them grew fast. Some became real celebrities. Some gathered audiences of hundreds of thousands or even millions.

They collected money for drones and vehicles. They posted battlefield maps, praised units, criticized generals and officials, explained losses away, and turned the invasion into a daily emotional ritual. It was propaganda with a grassroots engine.

This sudden popularity made them feel powerful.

A Z-blogger feels like he is inside history. He talks to soldiers, posts videos from the front, and raises a lot of money overnight. People thank him. Soldiers send photos with equipment he helped buy. For a man who spent years feeling useless and sidelined, this was intoxicating.

But there was always a trap.

Z-bloggers wanted freedom inside an unfree system. They supported censorship, because they thought censorship would be used only against their enemies. That never works.

In Putin’s Russia, you’re allowed to speak out loud only while you remain useful. The moment you start bringing out facts the state does not want, you become a problem.

And this is exactly where the Z-bloggers are now.

They support the war. But they see too much.

They see that the population is tired and does not donate as much as before. They see that rich Russians prefer Dubai, Cyprus, and quiet bank accounts to imperial sacrifice. They see that officials protect their chairs. They see that military procurement moves through corruption. They see that commanders often care less about taking Ukraine than about surviving, stealing, and not becoming the next corpse in the field.

Z-bloggers grew out of the same resentment that has been building in Russia for decades. The feeling that the country was humiliated. That the Soviet collapse was a theft. That the West laughed at Russia. That Ukraine had no right to walk away. 

This mood has an old European smell. After World War I, Germany had the same kind of humiliation, resentment, wounded pride, and dreams of national rebirth. Europe paid for that fantasy in the 1930s and 1940s.

But there is one difference. German elites of that period were part of a clear ideological machine. Russian elites are not like that.

Most of them have no imperial faith. They’d take prosperity over glory every time.

That angers Z-bloggers – and ultimately turns them against that very regime they appeared to support.

The Imperial Dream

The Z-world was born from a hunger for imperial greatness.

In their imagination, the Russian Empire was supposed to become whole again.

Ukraine played a central role in that fantasy because its independence was living proof that the empire had failed. More than that, Ukraine sat astride key routes carrying Russian exports to their most important customers in Europe. It could not exactly dictate terms, but it could complicate matters, demand its share, and insist on being treated as a sovereign actor. And it dared to choose its own rulers without much regard for Russia. As long as Ukraine existed as a separate political nation — choosing Europe and speaking in its own voice — the Russian imperial story remained unfinished.

So the war was a way to repair a broken myth.

For years, these people told themselves that Russia was stronger than it looked. That its people were quiet but loyal. That the elites were cynical, yes, but would rally around the flag when history called. That the army had problems, but deep down remained a great Russian army. That Ukraine was artificial, weak, divided, and would collapse when real force arrived.

Then real force arrived.

And Ukraine did not collapse.

Instead, Ukraine began to learn.

This is the part that burns the Z-bloggers most. Ukraine was not supposed to be more adaptive than Russia. It was not supposed to build flexible drone production, reform under fire, and outpace Russian in battlefield reinvention.

But today, Z-authors have to admit that Ukraine’s drone industry works almost like a venture system: many small producers, quick testing, money for what works, and a close link between the front and the factory. Russian Z-bloggers see it clearly because Russian soldiers are dying from the result.

And then they look at their own side.

They see a defense industry that, in the fifth year of the war, still struggles to provide enough heavy copters. A procurement system buried under rules. Bureaucrats afraid to give money to “unknown people.”

This is the moment when their imperial dream starts to crack.

Because the dream required unity.

Instead, every part of the machine chases its own private interest.

The Drone Panic

Drones did something no Ukrainian speech could do. They made the war feel real inside Russia.

At first, drones looked like a useful tool. Something strange and modern, but still secondary. Now, Z-bloggers write about drones as the central fact of the battlefield.

What scares them most is that drones denounce the old Russian idea of power. They do not care about your numbers or territories. And suddenly the expensive machine of empire is being hunted by something built in a workshop.

This mood shift became most visible after the drone strikes around Moscow.

The Z-world understood the insult immediately. Moscow was supposed to be untouchable. But then Ukrainian drones began breaking through. The state said everything was under control, because the state always says that. But the Z-bloggers heard another message.

If drones can reach Moscow, then distance no longer protects the empire.

And on the front, the fear is even worse.

Z-authors no longer explain Ukraine’s drone attacks as simple stockpiling. They increasingly write that Ukraine has reached production capacity. In other words, Ukraine can launch many drones, again and again, and force Russia to spend expensive air defense missiles on cheap targets.

The old propaganda line about Patriot missiles being expensive suddenly turned against Russia. Because Russian air defense has the same problem. A cheap drone flies in. A costly missile goes out. Even a successful interception becomes a financial wound.

The Fake Frontline

The second shock for Z-bloggers is: the official map lies.

On television, Russian forces advance. Villages are liberated. The army has the strategic initiative. Putin repeats this phrase because it sounds strong, and because no one near him wants to explain what it costs.

But the people reading battlefield reports every day see another picture.

They see places declared captured where fighting continues. They see villages mentioned in official reports, but no video proof from the actual location.

This is not a small technical dispute. In a vertical system, fake reporting kills people.

Here is how it works.

The top wants success. The lower levels know they want it. The reports move upward, and every level polishes the news a little.

Then the paperwork starts demanding reality.

If a village is already “taken” on paper, someone has to make it true. So infantry is sent forward, again and again, into drone zones.

This is why Z-bloggers rage at the gap between reports and reality.

They care because the Russian infantry is the fuel of their imperial project. If the fuel is burned for fake reports, the project weakens.

This is one of the major themes in the Z-community. They write that what television says and what Putin is told differ sharply from what happens on the ground. They point to places such as Chasiv Yar and Kupiansk, where the official story and battlefield reality do not align.

And that is dangerous.

Z-bloggers collect the facts that help them attack incompetent officials. But the same facts slowly lead them toward a larger discovery.

The problem is not one bad general.

The problem is a system where bad news is dangerous, so everyone learns to improve the news instead of improving the army.

 The Mobilization Myth

For a long time, Russian patriots had one magic answer: mobilization.

If the front stalled, mobilize. Put hundreds of thousands of men under arms, throw them into the war, and the old Russian advantage of greater numbers would return.

Now even that belief is cracking.

Z-bloggers increasingly understand that more men do not automatically solve a drone-era war. If the battlefield is watched from above, then new soldiers can become new targets.

Inside the Z-world, many believed that a second large wave of mobilization could change the war.

Now, serious pro-war voices are saying something darker: another 300,000 men may only increase the losses. They admit mobilization does not fix the central problem: lack of organization, technology, flexibility, and honest feedback between the front and the state.

Recent pro-war commentary described bureaucratic supply procedures as an internal enemy no less dangerous than the Ukrainian army.

The Nuclear Fantasy

When people run out of realistic solutions, they reach for magic.

In Russia’s war camp, the magic word is nuclear.

You hear it again and again. Why are we still waiting? Why not use tactical nuclear weapons and finish this? The logic sounds brutal and simple, which is why it attracts people who feel trapped.

The Z-world has two layers here. The first layer is emotional. These are the people who want a terrible blow, one act so frightening that reality finally obeys them. They don’t think in military terms. They think in humiliation and revenge. They want Ukraine punished, the West shocked, and Russia once again looking like a country that cannot be cornered.

The second layer is colder. Some military-minded Z-authors understand the problem. A tactical nuclear strike does not magically solve the front.

Strike one place, and what happens next? Ukraine keeps fighting. The West escalates support. China and India get angry, because they do not want Russia making nuclear chaos normal. Putin stops looking like a strategic genius and starts looking like a man who lost control.

The nuclear fantasy matters because it reveals not strength, but the absence of a workable plan.

So the dream of nuclear escalation becomes an emotional escape. It says: Maybe we don’t need to fix the bureaucracy. Maybe one monstrous strike can cover everything.

This is the same old Russian fantasy of power without repair. Don’t build a working machine. Find a bigger hammer.

But the more serious Z-authors know the hammer will not fix the engine.

And that creates a split inside the patriotic camp. The loudest voices demand an apocalypse because they need a symbol of dominance. The more informed voices see that the apocalypse will not produce a usable victory.

It may produce isolation, panic, and a battlefield that still does not move.

The Coming Betrayal

Z-bloggers helped the Kremlin in the most important years of the war. They gave the invasion emotional heat, explained failures, attacked dissenters, and collected supplies when the state failed to provide them. They made ordinary Russians feel that donating to the front was a form of patriotism.

For a while, they were useful. But usefulness in Russia is never permanent.

Today, we see Russian intelligence warning that Z-channels may be bought by Ukraine. Inside the Z-community, this warning was read in several ways. Some saw it as a signal that the state may start putting pressure on them, not for “discrediting the army,” but for treason. Others said channel purchases can be ordinary commercial schemes: buy a trusted Z-channel, keep its fundraising machinery alive, and milk the audience for money. And some saw the whole story as the intelligence services trying to prove their usefulness.

All three readings tell us the same thing.

Trust is gone.

In Putin’s system, everyone is a potential suspect, because the state does not know how to work with independent loyalty.

That phrase sounds strange, but it matters: independent loyalty.

Z-bloggers are loyal to the war, but not always obedient to the bureaucracy. They can criticize generals. They can publish problems before the ministry wants to admit them. They can make the public ask why volunteers must buy drones while officials give speeches.

That makes them useful at the front and dangerous in Moscow.

And if the war needs to be repackaged, they are perfect scapegoats.

Imagine the future story.

The leader was wise. The army was brave. The people were strong. But irresponsible bloggers, fake patriots, and greedy fundraisers damaged unity from within.

This is how the system protects the sacred center. It never says: the leader made a catastrophic decision. It says: lower people distorted his will.

Z-bloggers should understand this better than anyone, because they helped build that language. They spent years attacking “traitors,” “agents,” “cowards,” “saboteurs,” and “panic-mongers.” Now the same words can be turned toward them.

And there is another reason they are vulnerable.

They have records. Posts, fundraisers, screenshots, private chats, money trails. In Russia, any public life creates a future criminal case. You just don’t know which folder will be opened and when.

This is the irony.

They thought censorship was a weapon they could aim at others. They thought the state would let them speak because they were on the “right” side.

But an authoritarian state does not have a “right” side.

It has a top.

Everyone below can be sacrificed.

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