everyone thinks putin is a nutcase

@BlueVeins Yeah, and... erm... I dunno.

It makes sense if you assume someone is a rational actor. A rational actor would slowly take over the Dombas region, not go for (sigh, the 'nuclear option') and invade the whole of Ukraine. He's ultimately set to lose but the wounded animal is dangerous.

Let's not exaggerate though. There is only about a 4% chance that we will all die in a nuclear war in the next few months IMO.

It is probably posturing but the very worst case isn't an impossibility!

@Burnley123 Russia invading Ukraine isn't inherently irrational; they vastly underestimated Ukraine's military, sure, but it's nothing you'd be put in a home for or whatever. The only reason, at this point, why the Russian Crown would attempt a nuclear first strike is if Putin & everyone around him were seriously unaware of the causal relationship between nuking a nuclear state & getting nuked, and at that point we may as well just pack up all our shit because we're screwed no matter what we do. Setting the precedent that WMDs can deter soft power influence is waaaay more dangerous than the probability that Putin actually has no idea how MAD works, which -- let's be real -- rounds to 0%.

@BlueVeins Ukraine doesn't have nuclear weapons

@tindrummer Sorry if I implied that, didn't intend to do so. They gave 'em up in return for Russia promising never to attack again, and boy do they regret that.

@BlueVeins probably but good they did - too easy for escalation to tac nukes to happen - and then much worse

@tindrummer I tend to be pro-denuclearization, even if it occasionally results in awful conventional wars like this.

@BlueVeins Sure, but no one else with nukes is going to voluntarily give them up so they're here to stay and deal with forever