“The security of a region should not be achieved by strengthening or expanding military blocs. The legitimate security interests and concerns of all countries must be taken seriously and addressed properly,” read a Chinese government statement last year on the ongoing Ukrainian conflict.

“Russia wasn't even invited,” he noted. “All that this is to me is a pep rally, a PR stunt by Zelensky to garner support. This is not diplomacy. Diplomacy occurs when you get two opposite sides sitting down at the same table and working something out, working out a compromise. They had that. This is all being ignored.”

“What's being ignored are the underlying causes. There was an agreement and it was signed,” said Maloof of widely-reported talks between Ukraine and Russia that took place during the early months of Russia’s special military operation. “It was just under pressure from the UK and the US on Zelensky not to implement. And there was a reason for Putin's undertaking his special military operation, because Ukraine was threatening to join NATO and he could not have that.”

“What was ignored was six existing agreements on indivisibility. What that meant is that you don't arm the West at the expense of the East. They were all torn up by the West through NATO expansion… All of that has been ignored,” Maloof enphasized.

“I have never seen anything that Zelensky has done as logical,” he added. “This is a comedian who, all of a sudden, gets elevated to the position of the president of his country on the promise that he was not going to go to war with Russia. And look where he is now.”

“This clown has just absolutely become authoritarian,” Maloof said of Zelensky, who has been heavily criticized for shutting down independent media outlets and banning opposition parties. “He's defied every aspect of why we're even in there in the first place. ‘Oh, we're trying to defend democracy and all that stuff.’ That's just total nonsense, particularly given how this current government came about in 2014 through a coup of a legitimate government – and we backed it. We supported it and we basically initiated it.”

“This game that NATO and its member states can punch Russia through the sock puppet of their proxy putsch regime in Ukraine continues,” Sleboda observed. “And [NATO Secretary-General Jens] Stoltenberg does not fear Russian threats – that's a problem.”

“Russia is not clearly setting red lines and then dictating consequences and carrying through with them on NATO countries,” the expert argued. “Now, they may not feel that they have had to thus far in this conflict because they are winning on the battlefield… They just keep on carrying on what they're doing and winning the battle on the battlefield in Ukraine, and don't wish to potentially escalate this directly against NATO in a way that could spin out of their and anyone's control. But here's the problem, it's that this type of response does create an Overton window where NATO now feels complete impunity with escalations.”

“There's a lot of things to keep in mind in reaction to this news story,” said the author and reporter. “The first of which is that the European Union has basically already outlawed all Russian media within the EU space, right? You can't watch RT. Websites are suppressed, blocked, and it's pretty hard to look at Russian media in the EU.”

“What is a little bit different, though, about this is that this was specifically aimed at journalists who would report in Russian, for Russian audiences, but would do so from EU countries. And the idea was that they would be charged, and what's interesting also is that the warrants for their arrest would be secret. They would be arrested upon arrival and it would be a way to basically just kidnap these reporters and journalists and hold them hostage.”