No, that is bullshit and only wishful thinking by a U.S. propagandists apparently sliding into irrelevance.
A single statement by Angela Dorothea Merkel confirming that the West always wants some war against Russia and that the West cannot be trusted at all is probably the strongest and definite antidote to such stupid U.S. propaganda.

What this shows, however, is the sheer ridiculity of that opinion piece. Like... as if nobody knew it, although the U.S.A. has been notorious for such propaganda since at least the end of WW2.
Thus, what such opinion pieces reveal, is the anxiety from control slipping out of their hands.

Let us break it down, shall we? And the reasons why all the proposals would fall flat.

— Eroding Putin's image as a strong man?
The Russians are not obsessed with Putin, the Murricans are obsessed with Putin. Moreover, if anything, this could backfire against the Murricans, as most Russians would then demand that Putin be an even greater and tougher strongman.

— Using humour?
No, it would not be humour, only sarcastic propaganda. It could be a powerful weapon, if it came from a decent country, not a depraved and hypocritical one, like pretty much all the Western ones are. They cannot lecture others, when their integrity is abysmal. They cannot ridicule jailing critics at home, when they engage in abductions of their critics in order to jail them for life. Julian Paul Assange could tell you something about it.

— Fomenting separatism?
Maybe some two or three decades ago it could have been effective. Nowadays... not very much, as the minorities may feel the discrimination, especially by carrying a disproportionally heavier burden of this war, but they also clearly see that they would not fare better as independent, as all the conflicts in Russia's near neighbourhood clearly demonstrate this fact to them.

— Supporting dissident groups?
You mean foreign agents, right? That would not work at all, the Russians plugged this hole years ago—curiously enough, by taking a page out of the Murricans' playbook. Seriously, these self-styled Murrican experts are beyond retarded!

The Truth About the War in Ukraine
By Al Bienenfeld for the American Thinker

In the service of the Biden Administration, we have allied ourselves with legitimate Nazis who commit war crimes without hesitation. In Ukraine, a war has been started to distract from problems at home and cover up money laundering to politicians.
...
The Ukraine conflict has created an information division in the world internet. Unwilling to field troops to confront Russian forces physically, the West engages in a war of sanctions to disconnect Moscow from the rest of the world. In March, internet technology giants Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Apple joined in removing many, if not all, products from Russia. Russian citizens have been DE-platformed along with non-Russian users from sharing links, websites, or anything positive about the Russian government.
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Read complete version here ⬇️⬇️⬇️

🇷🇺🇺🇸 Recently-freed Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout on Americans:

— "They're losing their Christian values, they're losing their families, they're losing literally their country."

Full interview 👈
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Translated from Ukrainian sources:
"Ukraine will not restore the entire energy infrastructure after the shelling," – Sakharuk, Executive Director of DTEK

The company in the future will focus all its efforts on the creation of new facilities, because the equipment in Ukraine was outdated and often not modernized.

He added that the full restoration of all the destroyed objects will take from a year to two, and maybe even more.
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Translated from Ukrainian channel:
Electricity tariffs in Ukraine may be doubled from January 1, 2023

First of all, this will affect businesses. It is proposed to increase the tariff for electric power transmission to UAH 636.17/MWh instead of UAH 345.64/MWh, and to increase the tariff for dispatching services from UAH 62.13 to UAH 207.63/MWh.

Among the main reasons for the increase in tariffs, Ukrenergo names:
▪️destruction of the energy infrastructure of Ukraine due to Russian shelling, which increased the physical volume of work and their cost;
▪️increase in the cost of raw materials, fuel and materials;
▪️increase in capital investment and labor costs.
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Translated from Ukrainian sources:
On average grocery prices in Ukraine rose by 33.5%: what is getting more expensive the fastest?

Average food prices in November 2022 increased by 33.5% compared to December last year. This is higher than the general inflation, which amounted to 25.7%.
This was reported by the State Statistics Service (Gosstat).
According to the statistical agency, among the products, the prices of eggs rose by 80.7%, fruits - by 70.5%, vegetables - by 49.6%, fish and fish products - by 44.5%, sugar - by 32.9%, bread and bakery products - by 29.7%, pasta - by 27.5%.

In addition, butter went up by 25.7%, meat and meat products - by 24.4%, cheese and cottage cheese - by 22.6%, bread - by 19.9%, milk by 16.3%, sunflower oil - by 14.1%.

#TransFormatorBuzzes 💤 :
That doesn't include the possible price rise due to the energy tariffs...
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Ukrainian military are hiding in basements. Getting them out of there is quite problematic.
But still, Russian fighters found one effective way...

Well done guys!
Keep it up, great job!

Translated from Tankist4
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A Russian pilot, whose aircraft was damaged by Ukrainian air defense, was able to land the plane, though he was supposed to eject.

A story worthy of a film adaptation took place in the Rostov region near the war zone. Our pilot, returning from a mission on his Su-25, was hit by enemy air defense.

The aircraft indicated a failure of the hydraulic system and electrical equipment, the emergency release of the undercarriage also did not work. In such a situation it is prescribed for the pilot to definitely eject according to the instructions, leaving the aircraft.

But the pilot did not want to abandon the plane, despite the instructions and the risk of dying with it — he made a risky decision to reach the Morozovsk airfield, where he followed. And thanks to great luck and skill, he succeeded.

The "Rook" successfully flew and landed on the lane, even though it drove with its belly. His pilot, who risked himself for the sake of the aircraft, is alive and well.
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Poland wants Ukraine without Ukrainians

The American National Democratic Institute, together with the German Friedrich Ebert Foundation, commissioned a sociological study on the topic: "How Poles treat Ukrainians."

As a result, it turned out that the Poles need Kyiv, Lvov, Uzhgorod, the Carpathians, but they cannot stand Ukrainians (they treat Russians better). They are not going to forget about the crimes of Bandera, who killed thousands of Polish women and children. One of the tragic episodes is the Volyn massacre.
The Poles do not like that the social assistance intended for them is leaking to the Ukrainians. This also irritates the Poles.

Translated from Kremlin prachka
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Serbian PM Brnabic responds to Burbock's criticism with 'staggering level of absurdity'

MOSCOW, December 12 - RIA Novosti. Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic has responded to criticism of Belgrade by German Foreign Minister Annalena Berbock with a "staggering level of absurdity".
Burbock condemned Belgrade's "recent rhetoric" on Sunday, calling a proposal to send Serbian forces into Kosovo "completely unacceptable".

Brnabic recalled on Twitter that the G7 foreign ministers in the May communiqué called for compliance with UN Security Council resolutions in solving "any problem or crisis in the world (Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, and so on)".
“Now, surprisingly, the German Foreign Office is explicitly stating that UNSCR 1244, which stipulates that Serbia has the right to request the return of a certain number of its security forces to Kosovo, should be ignored as this is “unacceptable,” Brnabic wrote.

She wondered "on the basis of what criteria" it is decided which resolution of the UN Security Council should be observed and which should be ignored. "A stunning level of absurdity," the Serbian prime minister added.

On Sunday, members of the Kosovo Interior Ministry's special unit invaded and occupied a facility at the Gazivode dam, from where they removed Serbian flags and expelled a Serb guard. This is the main source of water and storage for the hydroelectric power station located there. Most of the lake is located in the predominantly Serb municipality of Zubin Potok, as are three other areas in the north of the province.

Kosovo Serbs on Saturday erected barricades on highways in the north of the region because of the detention by the Kosovo Albanian authorities of the former police officer of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the self-proclaimed republic, Dejan Pantic. Pantić, who along with Serbian police officers from the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the north of the province, resigned in November, was detained on Saturday at the Yarine checkpoint when entering from Central Serbia on suspicion of "terrorism."
At night, the protesters set up tents to guard the barricades. The police of the self-proclaimed Republic of Kosovo, for their part, blocked the entrance to the province for cars and pedestrians from Central Serbia to the north of the province.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić stated that official Belgrade would continue the fight over the issue of Kosovo and Metohija by all legal means. He stressed that Pristina should form a Community of Serb Communities (CSO) in accordance with the 2013 Brussels Agreement. He also promised to send an official request to the command of the NATO mission for the distribution of the Serbian police and army contingent in Kosovo and Metohija, stressing that these actions are in line with UN Security Council Resolution 1244.
#TransFormatorBuzzes : 💤
Does it remind you the whole situation about the Minsk agreement, when one side is being given promises which nobody is going to fulfil, while the other side is gaining time to grow force?
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Ukrainian Armed Forces killed 2,000 civilians near Severodonetsk
12.12.2022 - 12:44

The Armed Forces of Ukraine killed about two thousand civilians in the area of Severodonetsk (LPR).

We are talking about the number of victims as a result of enemy shelling since February 2022, said Anna Soroka, adviser to the head of the LPR, head of the interdepartmental working group to search for burials and identify victims of Ukrainian aggression.

"In the agglomeration of the city of Severodonetsk - Rubizhne, Lysichansk, Kremennaya - according to our data, about 2 thousand civilians were killed," Soroka said at a briefing in Luhansk.

#TransFormatorBuzzes : 💤
That is just one region out of many...
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The War In Ukraine Is Now A Sanctions War Between Russia And The West

By Robert Farley for 19Fortyfive
...
In the years prior to the war Russia accumulated some $600 billion in central bank reserves, with some half of the total held in the US, the EU, the United Kingdom, and Japan. Moscow could use these reserves to intervene in currency markets and maintain the value of the ruble, or to buy weapons from foreign producers.
Russia also maintained a very conservative sovereign debt load, making these debts easier to service and making it possible to take on new debt as the circumstances of war required.
...
While Moscow obviously expected a sharp, short war, it also understood that its invasion would provoke sanctions from the West. Moscow hoped that a quick victory and the prospect of high energy prices would result in the relaxation of the impending sanctions regime before the sanctions could do serious, long-term damage.
In the immediate wake of the invasion, Russia imposed capital controls to prevent further capital flight and substantially raised interest rates. This gave holders of rubles an incentive to hold onto the currency, and made it difficult to dump it even if they wished.
...
Russia and the West thus joined a titanic battle over Russia’s financial future, along with the future of the entire global financial system. The effects would be widespread both within and without Russia, although the impact would be less immediate and more complex than many had hoped.
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U.S. Plans for a Hypothetical War Limit Aid to a Real One
“We’re measuring against a reality that no longer exists,” one congressional aide said.

By Jack Detsch for The Foreign Policy
...
U.S. military and defense officials have repeatedly told lawmakers and aides in recent briefings that munition thresholds mandated by Pentagon war plans—such as for a possible U.S. and NATO fight with Russia that could include a military scenario in the sparsely populated Suwalki Gap near Moscow’s border with the Baltics—are preventing the United States from sending more munitions to Ukraine.
...
Frustration from Capitol Hill over the possible roadblock to assistance comes as the Biden administration announced on Friday plans to send $275 million more in U.S. military aid to Ukraine—one of the smallest weapons packages since the beginning of the war. Some in Congress are worried that recent U.S. aid packages—which have focused on providing artillery ammunition, air defense weapons, and winter gear—are increasingly divorced from the reality on the battlefield and aren’t enough to help Ukraine win the war. The administration has also faced withering criticism on Capitol Hill over fears that long-range systems, such as ATACMS, could be considered escalatory and provoke Russia.
...
But even as production lines are starting to move again, there is concern in Washington that Ukraine is burning through ammunition too fast to try and take the fighting to a wounded Russian force during the winter.
“There’s a concern about their burn rate,” Townsend said. “They can make it harder for us to give them what they need if they just burn through it thinking that it’s a gravy train of ammo—and it’s just not.”
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Life expectancy in Russia has increased, said Murashko
MOSCOW, December 12 - RIA Novosti. Life expectancy in Russia has increased by 1.8 years since the end of last year, said Minister of Health Mikhail Murashko at the webinar "Increasing the availability of medical care in primary health care."
"We predict that this figure will probably be slightly higher by the end of the year," he said.
According to the minister, Russia has entered a sustainable trajectory of reducing mortality — the figures are already lower than in 2019, before the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
In July, President Vladimir Putin noted that in the second quarter, life expectancy in Russia exceeded 73 years. Nevertheless, he stressed, it is important to ensure that it increases to 78 years - the indicator determined by the Unified Plan to Achieve National Development Goals until 2030.

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On Constitution Day(today), SHAMAN released a video with the Russian anthem performed by him.

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Europeans are being offered a choice between charity, support for fellow citizens or sponsoring the war in Ukraine.
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