Following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin destroyed what remained of independent journalism inside Russia. Yet the resulting vacuum produced an unexpected alternative: thousands of pro-war Telegram channels whose authors support Putin and the invasion but regularly contradict official propaganda, shedding light on the actual catastrophic conditions and developments of the war.

This unprecedented freedom is explained by the fact that this community is as close as it gets to civil support for the war effort. It is also a major fundraiser for the front, and is thus allowed to exist as long as it remains useful to the state.

Collectively known as the Z-space, these channels provide a unique real-time account of the war and the situation at the front, strikingly different from the official coverage.

Having analysed a massive archive of 40,840 posts from 1,834 channels, Philippov deconstructs the myths of Russian war propaganda and presents a much broader portrait of Putin’s Russia, paradoxically based on the accounts of Putin’s most avid supporters.

The people behind these channels come from entirely different backgrounds. They include veterans of the so-called “Russian Spring” who have fought in Donbas since 2014, residents of Donetsk and Luhansk, retired officers, military instructors, jet and helicopter pilots, former and serving members of the security services, frontline soldiers, Wagner fighters, military doctors, drone operators and engineers.

The most valuable sources are Z-channels run by civilian volunteers who supply the Russian military, catering to the actual needs that simply don’t exist on paper due to the utterly corrupt system based on lies at every possible level of command.

These volunteers remain in constant contact with soldiers at the front and often provide a first-hand account of the real state of affairs.

Essentially, Z-bloggers are not opponents of the regime. They want Russia to win. Yet by describing the war in real, often brutal detail, they inadvertently document the horror, chaos and utter inhumanity of what is happening. And, most importantly, they unveil fundamental flaws in the thoroughly corrupt Russian power structure, where system survival is achieved at the cost of human lives.

Philippov does not simply give these voices a platform. What makes his research unique is his in-depth, systematic analysis of this vast body of data. He collects and deciphers their accounts, then places them in the context of verified facts from the front line, revealing what the raw data alone cannot.

The author devotes a substantial part of the book to the new vocabulary of war coined by Russian Z-bloggers, including terms such as “zeroing”, “pits”, “meat-grinder assaults” and “grinding down”. Meticulously defined and explained by the author, this new lexicon reveals a shocking reality of how the Russian army conducts the war: the extrajudicial execution of servicemen; senseless infantry assaults carried out without artillery support, in which the majority of the attackers are killed; and the systematic destruction of Russian military units through repeated attacks on Ukrainian settlements or fortified positions.

This dictionary of war lays bare the military’s deep dysfunction and the systemic problems plaguing what was once widely believed to be Putin’s all-powerful army.

Z-bloggers are well aware of these problems, openly and often passionately writing about what official Russian propaganda conceals or distorts. They describe military failures, shortages, corruption, incompetence and the consequences of decisions made by the Russian state. But despite all this understanding, they are unable to reach a logical conclusion from their own observations.

Philippov does that for them.

Put in perspective, this thorough analysis of Z-channels produces a raw, unvarnished chronicle not only of the war, but also of the degradation of the Russian state.