| Dolalin |
03-06-2022 04:35 PM |
Putin has seen his nuclear scaremongering work. Everyone thinks he's a madman with his finger on the trigger and NATO won't get involved directly.
I think cowing to these threats is a mistake. I think it's emboldened him.
What happens in a few days or weeks when Russia starts running out of money and resources? Putin has no way out of this. Ukraine is now do or die for him. If he loses he's finished, personally, probably with a bullet to the head.
His only trump card left is his nukes.
I've seen it suggested he could try a test detonation up in the North Sea, or a tactical nuke somewhere in Ukraine, just to up the ante with shock and awe. I believe this is possible. When dictators are cornered, all they can do is escalate further. That's his only survival path right now.
That being said, I also read the leaked FSB analysis that's been going around, and it talks down the Russian nuclear arsenal as probably mostly mothballed and in disrepair. The plutonium cores need to be replaced every 10 years and the odds this maintenance has been kept up for the whole fleet is laughable. Putin also does not have a big red button to press -- there is a chain of command all the way down.
So I believe the best course of action here is to call his bluff on the nukes. Give the Ukrainians absolutely everything they ask for, and make clear to Putin that if he escalates with nukes in any way, NATO will move in to Ukraine.
Probably the happy path now is for a palace coup and that bullet to come quickly.
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