The remarkable - and utterly unprecedented - drama at the White House on Friday was greeted with undisguised glee by Russia's political establishment and state-controlled media.
The commentary largely savoured the public dressing-down of Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky. But analysts also speculated about the European reaction to the heated exchanges between US President Donald Trump, US Vice President JD Vance and his Ukrainian counterpart.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova suggested that President Trump and Vice President Vance should have "punched" Mr Zelensky after he said that Ukraine had been left alone during the conflict.
She praised Mr Trump and Mr Vance for their "miraculous patience".
Russian MP Alexey Chepa told Lenta.ru, Russia's most widely read news website, that he believed Mr Zelensky would not be invited back to the White House, saying that he was now a "persona non grata" in Washington.
The website said that "Zelensky has destroyed himself".
One of Russia's most widely read newspapers, Komsomolskaya Pravda, called the events in the Oval Office a "public flogging", while Argumenty i Fakty, another Russian newspaper, celebrated "the public dressing-down of the illegitimate leader of Kyiv’s regime".
Russia's state-controlled media stubbornly insists on labelling Ukraine's democratically elected government as either a "regime" or "junta" – a practice that has become standard across Kremlin-aligned outlets.
Senator Alexey Pushkov, quoted by Komsomolskaya Pravda, a daily Russian tabloid newspaper, claimed that Washington took note of Europe’s reaction to the row.
The show of support by many European leaders, he argued, has now turned them into Mr Trump’s "enemies".
The American president now has "more than enough reasons to break with Europe and make it feel the consequences," he added.
Komsomolskaya Pravda described the clash in the White House as a "spectacular fiasco".
Europe's "cunning plan to remove Trump" could be behind the Oval Office confrontation, according to political analyst Sergey Markov in comments made to Argumenty i Fakty, which is controlled by the Russian government.
Mr Markov claimed that Mr Zelensky's "insolence" was coordinated with his European and American allies – or Mr Trump's enemies.
The White House clash played into Russia's hands, said Maxim Suchkov, director of the Institute for International Studies at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations.
Now, he added, it is Russia's turn to play its cards right, but he acknowledged that "the keys to ending the conflict" remain in America's hands.
More specifically, he pointed to Elon Musk, arguing that if Mr Musk were to shut down Starlink, the satellite internet service that Ukraine’s military relies on, the war would come to an end.
Interestingly, the Russian media widely quoted former Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl.
In the aftermath of Russia's invasion, Ms Kneissl moved to St Petersburg, where she now leads the Geopolitical Observatory for Russia's Key Issues, a research centre established to advance Russian foreign policy.
In 2018, she famously danced with Vladimir Putin at her wedding, causing widespread outrage in Austria.
In a post on Telegram, Ms Kneissl said that the White House was ushering in "a new era" of "realism".
She added that the EU, "sandwiched between US tariffs … and its 16 sanction packages against Russia, will not be able to replace the US weapons and money invested in Ukraine".
Another Russian senator, Konstantin Kosachev, declared that "Zelensky lost this round with a deafening crash" and said he would have to "crawl on his knees" for the next one.
He added that the summit in London today, organised by Keir Starmer, was now even more significant.
European nations, he said, would have to choose "which side they are on".
