AFAIK NATO doctrine stipulates any minor-scale nuclear attack (utilisation of tactical nukes or dirty bombs; critically attacking civil nuclear infrastructure) will be countered with an 'overwhelming conventional response'.

Putin knows NATO still has some nasty stuff in their back pocket below the nuclear threshold.

My very personal guess is that German Taurus have not been released for that very reason.

well said and agreed

however, i am simply not surprised if ukraine built a nuke or plans to. they're dealing with russia. russia is stupid and only understands simple things. russia really could use a nuke. all of the rational reasons why that's stupid don't mean anything because it's russia we're talking about. ukraine understands that problem better than anyone. thus when dealing with such stupidity "if you nuke me i'll nuke you back" has to be said

Same with air defense, refineries, weapons plants, etc. nukes are terror weapons. A tactical nuke does not do much damage. They have conventional bombs that do similar damage but without the fallout.

For you

For me

But for Ukraine?

Not as anything offensive of course. Strictly for the typical M.A.D. scenario of "if you nuke me i nuke you"

War Thunder forums crying with rage now, they've been made redundant

Even so, I would not be surprised if Ukraine has secretly built a nuke and shown proof to Putin. They have the capacity

And I think this would upset a lot of people in the West but it would not upset me at all

Good point. You could almost say that if Russia threatens to nuke anyone, a promise to manhunt and kill Putin and his associates with all available military capacity, if they use a nuke, is probably a more effective deterrent than a threat to nuke back

You are right.
Myself, I heard the voice of Russia Today in that reply.

@NathanMurdock @benroyce

- Plus it's no big secret that in "The great #TankHarvest of 2022" #Ukraine did get their hands on comolete & intact #T95M2 tanks and I'd vonsider @bnd "criminally incompetent" if tjey didn't bought one for #WTD91 to disassemble and reverse-engineer.

https://mastodon.social/@kkarhan/116820008222826021

As an American, no

The USA is dead to the free world. Enough fucking morons decided to worship a rapist pedophile, and enough entitled losers thought it was fine to not vote. We need to rebuild your trust and it will take decades

I think it's possible Russia could use a nuke

But the real issue is how we respond to that threat

If we freak out and give into demands that means we reward such behavior. Thus there will be more nuke threats (and more countries making them) thus increasing the chances of nuke use

The only valid response to a nuke threat is assurances that Moscow and St Petersburg will cease to exist if they use a nuke

This response alone delivers the smallest chance of nuke use

PS:

I hadn't seen the site, thanks for the link. The sign up process is kind of funny. I can see them being inundated with requests from 14 year olds. We would suppose the access request process would be more discreet

But then again the real value of the site is in trolling Russia as loudly and publicly as possible. So the requests from teenagers is an acceptable cost, or even completely ignored. I don't think the French Govt for example will have to fill out this form