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Originally Posted by Pointman
Is it even plausible to nuke your neighbour? Fall out is very likely to affect Russia itself. From my admittedly poor understanding, nuclear weapons are designed to be dropped on someone across an ocean, like Japan from USA.
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It entirely depends on the nukes you're talking about. You're thinking of strategic nuclear weapons, which would be used in a general war and would be used to destroy cities. These are the kinds put on ICBMs or carried by submarines and would be accompanied by nuclear armageddon.
https://military-history.fandom.com/...nuclear_weapon
Conversely, tactical nuclear weapons, or battlefield nuclear weapons, have much smaller yields and are the kind most experts fear that Putin would use in Ukraine. The smallest of these can have their yields set to about .3kT and could be used to wipe out an army/section of a city and would not have the same radioactive fallout/wouldn't create nuclear winter.
The other fear is that Russian military doctrine may call for 'escalate to descalate', the idea being that by using a few tactical nuclear weapons the Russians could get NATO to backdown and avoid a strategic nuclear exchange, thereby ending a conflict on terms favourable to Russia.
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proce...te-de-escalate