Following a devastating recent strike on the air leg of the Russian nuclear triad by Ukranian drones, some analysts believe the use of nuclear weapons by Russian has become much less unlikely.
Somehow I don't see those as related. Any use of nukes will not be an act of rationality. That's the utter stupidity behind this belief in MAD keeping us safe.
Exactly, there is no official communication that the attack on nuclear capable planes is revenged with a nuclear attack.
What has been very clearly communicated though is that the attack on the personal transport trains has been counted as a terrorist attack and now Russia is about to declare Ukraine leadership as a terrorist organisation.
A change from special operation to a terrorist hunt involves various changes.
Those are just empty names russian tv is making up to amuse less bright part of population. Its just another war, has been since 2014, nothing more and nothing less.
Lets not forget in first hours of 2022 invasion there were numerous hunting squads deployed in Kyiv with explicit orders and training to execute all Ukraine's high command, including Zelensky and all his family, and cause chaos on civilian and military infrastructure. There are numerous videos how those guys failed, were caught and mostly executed since they expected a very different situation on the ground (which is valid even as per Geneva convention, as non-marked combatants behind enemy lines would often face). One of many FSB and GRU's failures.
If we want to talk about terrorism, list of items on russian side is very, very long and new items are added every day. As I said, empty words and all know it. The closer you look at russia these days at all levels the more similarities with nazi Germany you will find. History really keeps repeating itself with sometimes stunning precision.
I'm not the person you're responding to, but most of the irrationality of nuclear weapons use is when it's nuclear weapons use against an entity which also has nuclear weapons.
Any use is going to lead to at a minimum an equally harmful response.
I'd replace "some analysts" with "some alarmists". And unless you're in the hyped-up headline business, the attack fell well short of "devastating".
Plus, the pre-attack triad cred of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-95 bombers was pretty limited. Notice that they are turboprops. From the 1950's. Hitting hard against the western nuclear powers (US/UK/France) ain't in their talent set.
The point is that Tu-95s are still an integral part of Moscow's aircraft leg of their nuclear triad. They are fully capable of carrying nuclear-tipped standoff weapons and attacking Europe. They fulfill the same role as the B-52 (also a 1940s-1950s design) does for the USAF. Their apparent cruising speed is roughly 100kph less than the B-52 and they are comparable in range.
Part of the reason it's so critical to Moscow is the uncertainty over the viability of their missile-based systems (both the land-based and sea-based legs of the triad). Maintenance has been so poor on these systems that no one is sure how reliable they are.
Yet the passably professional military news sites I've read describe the attack in terms like "substantial", "demoralizing", and "temporarily constrain Russia's ability to conduct long-range drone and missile strikes into Ukraine". Not "devastating", nor any similar (emotive or maximal) terminology.
sigh all of that history existed before the development of ICBMs and submarine launched ICBMs particularly. Which happened around the 1960s-ish depending how you count it.
ICBMs, and in particular submarine based ICBMs, are what provide nuclear deterrence in a serious fashion. They arrive faster, and are effectively unstoppable at scale.
An attack can be devastating without harming any military capabilities at all.
9/11 was devastating. October 7th was devastating. Pahalgam was devastating.
The drone attacks against Russian airbases were highly destructive, caused extreme shock, and were extremely impressive - the literal definitions of devastating.
The response will depend on the emotional and political reality within Russia. Although they have not lost their nuclear strike capabilities, they have lost face and now Putin may feel the need to act to retain his strongman hold on the country, or risk being Ceaușescu'd.
And no one responded to any of those with strategic nuclear attacks.
Russia certainly hasn't actually ramped up any nuclear rhetoric in response, which it's been happy to do at other times when it would be taken less seriously (and ramped it down significantly in late-2022 after it's US back channels communicated their intentions if any nuclear weapons or nuclear terrorism was used in Ukraine).
