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Originally Posted by FlameOn
I don't see that. Repeatedly the Russian position is they will use nukes in an "existential" crisis. That to me is if NATO attacks them and they are losing ground inside their country. Hopefully there are still some sane Russian generals left.
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According to Russia, everything is an existential crisis, as well as everything that happens isn't their fault. It's evil NATO, America, WW2 baggage, Napoleon, or the Mongols. It has nothing to do with their foreign policy or actions.
People slag the U.S. and Britain all the time for having an aggressive foreign policies that cause blowback, and they aren't wrong for that criticism. There are even a strong opinions within mainstream American and British politics (because that is what happens in free countries). In Russia, it is always about the other side with no self-reflection or motivation to try and do better.
This is the part where it gets sketchy. What a reasonable country considers an existential crisis is quite different than what Putin and Russia in general consider one and no one knows for sure where they will draw the line. The fact we are even talking about nukes in Ukraine says a lot. Contrarians like to use whataboutisms like, what about the U.S. and Iraq, or Afghanistan, but nukes were not even a thought in those conflicts because the U.S. isn't bat#### crazy, nor did they deny that those countries have a right to exist. Not saying that wars for regime change are ideal in anyway and I was critical of those as well, but wars that want to erase a country off the map are quite different.
Sorry, I am going a little off the rails, but I guess the point is that when it comes to nukes, no one really knows where Russia draws the existential crisis line. I think it's fair to say that a large part of the Russian losses are directly related to the arms support that Ukraine has received from the West. At some point, it is quite possible that with high losses, Russia shifts that line to NATO and not Ukraine. I think there is a good chance that if Russia decides to go nuclear, the first strike wouldn't be on Ukraine, but on NATO itself because if they can't win, they will at least want to make sure that everyone loses.