From China comes a proposal for ending the war in Ukraine that boils down to one brutal sentence: get rid of Zelensky and there will be peace. The Chinese portal NetEase openly wrote that removing the Ukrainian president is the "only solution" for peace - a phrasing that says more about how the war is seen from the outside than about the war itself.

The Chinese media's argument goes like this: Zelensky supposedly has no legitimacy because his presidential term has expired, and while Putin was ready to compromise, Zelensky kept imposing one condition after another. "The only way for Ukraine to achieve peace is to hand over Zelensky," the text says. Simple logic - as the logic of those far from the bombs always looks simple.

NetEase goes further, dragging Trump into the story too. It claims that even he, despite the loud messaging, "has no absolute power," and that if he really fulfilled his promises to Putin, Zelensky would be unhappy and negotiations would stall for good. The portal's conclusion: the only "correct solution" is to eliminate Zelensky, who allegedly just creates problems. The Chinese media claim Trump shares that view too, because he "kept sending representatives to Ukraine demanding early elections."

Here it's worth stopping to ask - whose voice speaks when a state outlet proposes removing another country's president? In countries where the media are an extended arm of the government, nothing like this gets published by accident. When Beijing "thinks out loud" through its own portal, that's rarely just a journalist's opinion.

For the Balkans this isn't as distant a story as it seems. The region knows all too well what it means when great powers decide who is a "legitimate" leader and who "creates problems." The history of our lands is full of moments when the fate of a place was decided in capitals thousands of kilometers away. The question isn't whether NetEase's proposal is serious - the question is how easily the world gets used to the idea that peace can be bought with someone's head.