It's actually funny... If they released them quickly, that is. But if the government is keen on taking this stance, why isn't it just censoring the media and freelancers? Detaining one person instead of two, like in this case, should be much better for their purposes. 

Russia directly attacking NATO would be about the dumbest thing he could possibly do at this point. If we think the AWOLs of the Russian military, disloyalty of their current client-states, and protests of the Russian citizenry are a lot now, they will explode then. No one, and I mean no one, has fought the combined, full power of NATO, ever. Putin his losing the ratio war against Ukraine as we speak, and that's one nation with mostly outdated technology. NATO has the most up-to-date tech, and a network of spies inside Russia ready to do some dirty things if need be, and drones galore, and probably tech Americans and Co. have developed that Russia/China doesn't even know about, plus a MASSIVE combined army, many of them being veterans of wars some NATO nations fought in (but not as NATO and not with other NATO allies).

Combine the fact that if Russia engaged NATO, there would be no reason for countries considering membership to NATO should not join, since the Russians will be greatly weakened very quickly due to numerous pre-planned strikes on NATO's part that they have had planned out/updated for decades in case of this scenario, so we'd immedietly get Finland, Sweden, Ukraine, and some other nations joining the defensive pact and joining the war. Russia has roughly 25% of its entire military in Ukraine right now and they have the most border of any nation to protect in the world.

A "committee of the people's chosen ones" sounds like the old Soviet Poiltburo or the National People's Congress of China, a body of unelected hand-picked oligarchs claiming to represent the will of the people.

1) China isn't getting directly involved in this. The world owes them SO MUCH MONEY. If they fought NATO, all these countries would immedietly stop paying China their debts and China's looming economic depression, currently projected to occur in the next couple decades due to the long-term ramifications of their one child policy, will arrive even sooner, and when the economy collapses in a country of a billion people, you will see much bloodshed and self-destruction. China doesn't want any of that. They want Putin to cause headaches and chaos, maybe capture some land and weaken the west, but if they wanted wars with us, they wouldn't have spent the last decades loaning us all money. You don't loan people money that you plan on attacking, that's just stupid.

2) Russia's drones will be greatly outnumbered and outclasses by the missile defense systems of NATO and the drones they have themselves. 

Bullshit. Xi Jinping knew damn well what was going to happen. He's trying to claim plausible deniability. He just didn't expect things to go this spectacularly bad

He probably was either misinformed or misassessed the situation, but he's almost certainly not stupid. He has little to gain by acting against NATO but much to lose, and he knows it. At worst, he might try to pull off minor strikes, but he won't: He's clearly wants nothing to do with NATO, judging by his nuclear threats clearly aimed at NATO countries for them to stay away from Ukraine.

Well it sure didn't take much to break your morale lol why are you freaking out about drones so much anyway? It's bad news for Ukraine for sure of course, but Russia has even worse weapons at their disposal..

But don't worry too much, Putin won't attack Nato. There's nothing he would gain for doing it and he would lose.

I don't know about this news Russia asking China for weapons..it's evident their military force isn't what it was supposed to be but I find hard to believe they'd run out of weapons and equipment after two weeks of war. 

Maybe it's information warfare by the West? To make China distance themselves further from Russia and publicly deny them from military aid? Might be too far-fretched but I don't know..

They clearly weren't prepared for anything but the bare minimum of resistance from Ukraine, and when they found out the Ukrainians were actually willing to fight back, things started going downhill for Russia and Putin. We've been trying to be cautious in our optimism that maybe Putin is holding back, but it's becoming increasingly evident that he's in over his head. He was definitely in Beijing for more than just watching the Russian Olympic Committee's hockey team. He's also recruiting for "volunteers" (mercenaries) in the Middle East and Africa.

Not disputing anything you said, Putin sure seems to be in over his head. But I still find it unlikely the world's 2nd strongest military power would be asking for military aid after two weeks of warfare. Recruiting mercenaries I can understand, morale of his own troops could be very low and using military reserves might be problematic as it's still "a special operation" or some bullshit. If he arms 500,000 people for example they might march towards Moscow instead of Kyiv.