This is the only way to get the conflict to end, let the Ukrainians really hit back so that the Russians are pressured for peace. Without that pressure the invasion of Ukraine will continue indefinitely.
Vyacheslav Volodin, the chairman of the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, and a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, said Moscow would be forced to use "more powerful and destructive weapons" against Ukraine if Kyiv started firing long-range Western missiles at Russia.
Hey Vyacheslav, what weapons besides nuclear (and maybe biological) weapons does russia have that it hasn't used against Ukraine already? Do you think if you use a nuclear weapon against Ukraine that that ends the war? Do you think the rest of the world will just say "welp, I guess russia used a nuke, better let them have Ukraine now". Not even close.
Russia uses nukes in Ukraine to "win" the war. Now they control land that has large swaths that are completely unlivable and non-productive for farming. And the "livable" parts Russia would have to spend huge sums of money to re-build the infrastructure from the blast(s).
Even if the rest of the world let's them get away with that (which I doubt they would) it doesn't seem like a very good strategy.
If they nuke Ukraine into oblivion, they're not spending a single kopeck building it back. They'll engineer a second Holodomor to "get their money's worth" before that.
At this point I'm questioning if they really have working nukes, or if some commanders sold them of to ISIS 15 Years go and the warheads are now filled with empty vodka bottles.
More realistically warheads need their fissionable components replaced every 20 years or so, Considering Russia claims to field the worlds largest nuclear arsenal on the same budget the UK spends on a much smaller arsenal (albeit likely far more advanced in the delivery system department) its extremely questionable wether the nuclear material in most of those warheads is still viable.
While in a full scale nuclear war even a 10% success rate is apocalyptic it really does matter if they want to make a demonstration strike on Ukraine, imagine the geo-political ramifications of Russia making the huge decision to make a nuclear strike only for that missile to fail to properly detonate.
There used to be a joke in Russia called "China's final warning" because of the hundreds of times China used to threaten a "final warning" to whoever it perceived (correctly or otherwise) as encroaching on its politics or territories, and then promptly did absolutely nothing.
The joke is in danger of defecting and getting a new name.
Where's "here"? I'm in the UK and only discovered that there had been a specific saying, in (Soviet) Russia, about (contemporaneous) China, very recently. Maybe it was a joke I wasn't privy to or heard but was too young to appreciate at the time.
(As to how I discovered it recently: I had been looking for a name or "law" for the concept of constantly making vague or empty threats - it's kind of like crying wolf, but not - and somehow ended up the Wikipedia article on "China's final warning".)
Seriously, short of a nuke, how much can he actually escalate? He’s basically thrown what he can at them without risking any other front. This is an empty threat.
I imagine they still have fissile material in them, since that is hard to move without intelligence agencies catching wind. Other parts, rocket fuel, etc. very well may have been stolen.
But we should treat them as though they still have nukes, even if we think our defenses could overcome them.