Well, who would have thought it: Vladimir ‘the Great’ Putin, the puppet of the Chinese, has decided to throw millions of poor Russians into the meat grinder of an externally imposed war.
Of course! Why settle for a quick deal that would guarantee Ukraine’s independence, when you can instead send your soldiers to die for a war that isn’t even yours?

Yes, because by now it is clear as day: Russia is fighting a proxy conflict, ordered by the lords of Beijing.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told Kaja Kallas in no uncertain terms: ‘We cannot allow Russia to lose the war against Ukraine, because then the US could focus all its resources on Asia’.

So, while the Russians die, they pay the price to let the Chinese sleep softly in their beds.
And in the meantime, the numbers speak for themselves: over a million Russian soldiers have been wounded or killed, up to five million Russians fled their country, and the Russian economy fell on its knees, with oil revenues reduced to a few kopeki, crops collapsed by 25% and factories closing their shutters one after the other.

Hunger and unemployment, but what does Putin care? He has to obey his Chinese masters.

The Chinese were cleaver in convincing the little Tsar-cosplayer that he could conquer Ukraine in a few days.
‘Special operation’, he called it. But more than 500 days have now passed, and the only thing special is the disaster he has wrought. Soldiers sent to the slaughter without proper equipment and with minimal training, bases and industrial districts hammered every night by Ukrainian drones, and an international reputation ripped to shreds.

But I say, dear Vladimir of all Russias, don’t you feel a little stupid?
Isn’t it enough for you to have reduced your country to misery, with sanctions crushing the economy and an increasingly desperate population?
No, you also have to sacrifice millions of lives for a military adventure that serves no purpose except to keep the Americans busy for Comrade Xi Jinping’s pretty almond eyes.

And in the meantime, while your boys are falling like flies, you are safely ensconced in your gilded palace, toasting with your Chinese friends.
But history does not forget, dear Putin.
And history will judge you for what you are: a puppet and a servant.

This editorial was written by an AI in the style of the Russian-leaning Italian propagandist Marco Travaglio. The prompt was given starting with a rumour about Wang Yi’s words to Kaja Kallas that has not even been officially confirmed.
Had he actually uttered these words, Wang Yi would have implicitly informed the European Union that the invasion of Taiwan is imminent, which goes against the usual tactics of Chinese diplomacy.

The purpose of the editorial, therefore, is not to state as a fact that Russia is waging a proxy war, but to reconstruct the style in which Travaglio and other Russia-leaning Western journalists invent and spread disinformation of this kind about the Ukrainians’ choices.

And no, you will not find a disclaimer like this in their newspapers.