President Volodymyr Zelensky believes that Ukraine’s partners “are afraid of Russia losing the war” and would like Kyiv “to win in such a way that Russia does not lose,” Zelensky said in a meeting with journalists attended by the Kyiv Independent.
Kyiv’s allies “fear” Russia’s loss in the war against Ukraine because it would involve “unpredictable geopolitics,” according to Zelensky. “I don’t think it works that way. For Ukraine to win, we need to be given everything with which one can win,” he said.
His statement came on May 16 amid Russia’s large-scale offensive in Kharkiv Oblast and ongoing heavy battles further east. In a week, Russian troops managed to advance as far as 10 kilometers in the northern part of Kharkiv Oblast, according to Zelensky.
The outcome of the war in Ukraine has always been a game of chicken, being which side is willing to escalate to nuclear weapons, and whether the other side may or may not back down. The logic of escalation has always been that no possible gain exceeds the losses caused by a nuclear exchange. The Madman theory ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madman_theory ) is about convincing one’s opponent that is one is not rational, and is willing to use nuclear weapons despite the losses. The threat then, is that Putin, seeing himself politically vulnerable because of his losses, but still powerful enough to command the military to use nuclear weapons, would demonstrate his willingness to use nuclear weapons, even if not directly against a military target, in a demonstration (perhaps in the Black Sea) or an exoatmospheric test.
No it hasnt.
If you think Russian would nuke “their land” or at best a “bordered neighbour”. You’ve lost the plot. Also the title of their ag industry “lost plots”…
You are entirely wrong. Russian doctrine with nuclear weapons has cases in which nuclear weapons would be detonated as area deniability. You nuke an ingress route, it will keep infantry and tanks from being able to attack in that direction.
They also had doctrine about losing land and essentially turning it into a Carthage situation and making it completely unlivable.
That’s all well and good, if this were 1910. We have airplanes now that can drop entire tank battalions out the back. Blocking an ingress route just means we go around with our mobile Taco Bell and McDonald’s.
Even Stalin knew better than to fuck with the US in the air or at sea, and they’ve spent the last 80 years becoming the Global Boogeyman, only to turn out to be a schoolyard bully, meanwhile when the US military announces that it can do “_______,” they never release the real capabilities of their syatems so we don’t care if they nuke themselves. They wanna step up to bat, we’re gonna speedrun the 3 day war in 72 hours.
The Russians have nuclear submarines. No amount of bellicose bravado will blunt the sting of those.
Yeah, and they are so noisy we have known where they all are, as well as their “attack subs,” since the late '60s. Russia makes a move and we sink all of theirs immediately, since we have triple the amount they do
Nuclear war is a very real possibility. If Putin becomes desperate enough, he will try to go to the very edge of brinksmanship. In this situation, with launch on warning, any perceived provocation could rapidly escalate. As the fear of a preemptive strike increases, so does the probability of a preemptive strike. Rationality gives way to fear. This is the logic and danger of brinksmanship: that the more you rely on it, the more likely it is to escalate out of control before one side backs down.