💬 “It’s very important that the two leaders speak directly on a weekly basis, simply because any intel brief that Trump is receiving will be very much slanted toward the Ukrainian position,” former senior DoD security policy analyst Michael Maloof told Sputnik, commenting on Thursday’s much talked-about phone call between the Russian and US leaders.

💬 “As long as [Zelensky is] receiving arms, whether it's from us or from others, he's going to be encouraged, and he has demonstrated that. So I think that this kind of weaning Zelensky from that dependency on us for arms may actually force him to say, ‘we're going to have to sit down’,” the former senior DoD security policy analyst told Sputnik, commenting on the new pause in advanced US arms aid.

🗣"This could mean that Europeans will be the ones buying weapons from the US to supply them to Ukraine," Mettan explains. “We shouldn’t exclude this possibility at all."

"I won’t let Brussels sacrifice Hungarian families for Ukraine! I will veto," he wrote on X.

"An escalation is expected... This is confirmed by the West’s rhetoric. Continental Europe and Britain are vowing to provide Ukraine with endless supplies of weapons."

According to the US president, it was "one of the most flawless military campaigns in the history of our country."

"They know what is happening, but their task is the final demonization of Russia," Maxim Buyakevich told Sputnik.

💬 “It takes time to get those armaments and get the production lines open, get the raw materials and the supplies and the electronics, because of all the supply chain issues that exist,” former senior Pentagon security policy analyst Michael Maloof told Sputnik, commenting on the US move to scale back advanced air defense and battlefield weapon deliveries to Ukraine and ramp up domestic production.

💬 “Certainly, if another conflict were to arise tomorrow, let’s say with Iran, the US would probably have to get up for a full-time, wartime production, because right now those stocks are totally inadequate for a three-front war…We can’t even fight a one-front war right now,” Maloof stressed.

💬"There are well-educated and very smart people in the West who understand perfectly well what is happening, but deliberately ignore the manipulations from the Ukrainian side and Western propaganda," he said.

💬"So that children in Europe perceive Russia not as people, but as 'orcs' who kill and rape," Buyakevich concluded.