It's really not pants on head. The Western propaganda machine immediately crucifies anyone saying anything bad about Ukraine. War crimes in Donbas? "You're trying to undermine the Ukraine cause!" The US helped engineer a regime change in Ukraine in 2014 that resulted in civil war? "But they're democratic now!" (By the way, see the parallels to Iraq there?) NATO, which was once thought defunct after the fall of the Soviet Union, building bases on Russian border? "Well, they're authoritarian and need to be contained!"

Well, Russia felt threatened and took the bait and invaded Ukraine (not justified, by the way. Still wrong.) And now, how many billions of dollars are going to the Ukraine war effort from the US? And you cant say a bad thing about Ukraine without being vilified as a Putinist.

I mean, someone the other day told me "the only anti-war stance is to send more weapons to Ukraine so they can end this war faster." What? That's like saying "the only way to end the conflict in Vietnam is to send the southern Vietnamese more troops so they can destroy the northern communists faster." Nah, an anti-war position is leaving Ukraine to defend themselves.

For the US, this is not aiding a democratic country against an authoritarian regime. If this were really about democracy vs authoritarianism, we'd be sending weapons to Palestine against the authoritarian state of Israel. But since Israel is a useful tool under our thumb, that's not going to happen. This is a proxy war that we wanted so that the people can have an easy person to hate (just like in the middle east), justified in the name of "democracy" (pro-western government US helped install, also like Middle East), and furthered by billions and billions of dollars worth of weapons and aid packages, paid to defense firms like BAE and Raytheon.

I don't think ukraine can win this war and take back all their territory, including Crimea. And that's good for the US, because war is profitable and having an adversarial country like Russia (for Republicans, it's China) is politically advantageous.

Edit: BTW, this is not all to say that the OP is true. I've not been able to verify the veracity of the disappearance of this journalist, the most reputable source being https://twitter.com/MarkSleboda1/status/1686619514211868672?s=20 who reports from a Russia PoV. I think it's important to maintain that Russian PoV =/= Russian propaganda, but still important to be skeptical.

acting like Daddy Vladdy’s media is somehow better than Western media

I've mentioned in a previous comment that both Russian and US media can be seen as propaganda. I value them equally and believe they hold similar importance. It's essential for people to consider various perspectives before forming conclusions. I label US media as propaganda because it's predominantly consumed, but the same applies to media from any other country.