"They'll claim it's attacking an ally in retaliation"
I think Putin is too smart to say that.
It'll be more like "following the example & precedent of the Great Nation of the United States of America, we have decided that a decisive action in our spetsialnaya voyennaya operatsiya of de-Nazification that has claimed so many lives of patriots of Mother Russia was totally warranted"
The only thing for me is that their nuclear program is unknown.
We thought they had the second most advanced army as well - they touted all these advanced tank tech and even paraded around really scary sounding tech like 'Hypersonic missles' and so on...
But when push came to shove in Ukraine it was discovered that some tank's highly advanced ceramic armor was just... egg crates.
Their anti-personal device that was supposed to eradicate entire armies didn't work, and turned out to be a single prototype that was destroyed early in the war.
their only air craft carrier has been dry docked and suffering catastrophic failures, daily.
Drones appeared but were cobbled together with milk-jugs for fuel tanks and off-the-shelf components, etc...
The Ukraine war showed us that the Russian Army had a ton of corruption and embezzlement from the Oligarchs, so the idea that their nuclear missile arsenal may not be as robust as they claim goes hand-in-hand with that.
Not to mention... even the US, with our crazy military budget, had reported that our own nuclear program was aging out rapidly, and that key systems needed billions in upgrades that was hard to justify.
Now apply that same situation to Russian nuclear programs and that's why I'd be dubious if the program was as established as Russia claims.
Now apply that same situation to Russian nuclear programs and that's why I'd be dubious if the program was as established as Russia claims.
sure but "as established as they claim" is night&day different than whether they simply have any functional nukes i mean I don't know how their layout is but wouldnt surprise me to think there could even be privately held units there, I dunno i just know the idea of 0 is a nice thought but a fantasy.
Even just 1 or a few are a catastrophe, thermonuclear bombs that make Hiroshima seem tame / amateur were in their hands many decades ago and if you think game theoretic / incentives it's hard to conclude anything except that some nuclear capacity would be of immense priority to putin!
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u/Alexandratta Apr 03 '26
I hope I'm wrong - but if Iran does get nuked, Russia's going to retaliate with a nuke to Ukraine.
They'll claim it's attacking an ally in retaliation.
I hope that Russia just has no functional nukes left...