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Foreign Affairs

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TexasTowelie

(124,997 posts)
Wed Dec 10, 2025, 12:02 PM Wednesday

It Finally Happened! Z-Army Begins to Implode. Nobody Wants to Join Anymore - The Russian Dude [View all]



Russia’s military has reached a breaking point, and the collapse can no longer be hidden behind propaganda or staged patriotism. The once-mythical “second army in the world” is now exposed as a hollow force rotting from decades of corruption, fake equipment, stolen budgets, and a population no longer willing to die for empty promises. From wooden grenades and foam-filled body armor to expired rations and 1940s rifles, the Russian military machine is shrinking at a speed that reveals a deeper national crisis. Recruitment has collapsed, volunteers have vanished, and even the poorest regions are drained of fighting-age men. Signing bonuses are shrinking, salaries delayed, and families of the dead receive nothing as the Ministry of Defense invents new bureaucratic traps to avoid paying compensation. The propaganda ads promising luxury cars and new apartments are no longer fooling anyone. Instead, Russians see the reality: men sent into a modern war with children’s walkie-talkies, taped-together jets, malfunctioning missiles, and commanders who view soldiers as disposable.

As mobilization failures grow, the Kremlin relies on fear, coercion, street kidnappings, and forced contracts that function like life sentences. Yet even this strategy is faltering because people understand the truth: you can risk your life for the state, but the state will never risk a ruble for you. Corruption at every level — from generals buying villas instead of armor to oligarchs spending more on yachts than the navy spends on ships — has turned Russia’s army into a Potemkin structure collapsing under the weight of its own lies. Putin believed his own propaganda, underestimated Ukraine, and overestimated the army he thought he built. Now Russia is fighting a modern war with outdated weapons, starving logistics, untrained recruits, and a shrinking manpower pool that threatens the future of the entire campaign.

This video breaks down how Russia’s military reached this breaking point, why nobody wants to join, why propaganda no longer works, how corruption hollowed out the armed forces, and why the Kremlin now faces an impossible dilemma. The decline is real, the manpower crisis is irreversible, and the Russian military is shrinking faster than the regime can replace its losses. The collapse of recruitment isn’t just a military issue — it’s a sign that the social contract between the Kremlin and its people has shattered. Discover the full story of Russia’s rapid military decay, the collapse of volunteer numbers, the shrinking bonuses, the unpaid salaries, the exposed corruption, and the growing nationwide refusal to fight in Ukraine.

This is the breaking point the Kremlin feared — and it has finally arrived.
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