For serious discussion - like your thoughts beyond simple "Russians go home" platitudes. What even is a russian theory of victory at this point?
First off - this STILL seems to be a war where their only goal is conquest and capitulation of the Ukrainian government to a Russian puppet one. But - how do they intend realize that?
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Terroristic bombings against civilian targets from standoff distance has never, ever been successful at defeating an industrial society. It's way, way way too expensive to maintain and doesn't hold ground.
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Russia's mechanized forces in mass have largely been wiped out and is cost-ineffective compared to Ukraine's ability to stop them with drones.
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Russia's infantry tactics is literally sending in small infiltration teams into forward areas, where they are eventually either droned, sniped, mined, shelled or outright counter attacked and killed.
Ukraine seems capable of increasingly automating their defense AND assualt forces to be less manpower intensive, and able to trade a little bit of land temporarily until they can kill the infiltration teams that bum rush positions in cars, motorbikes or on foot. The latter is NOT a serious or effective strategy for occupying and pacifying conquered land.
In the big picture - Russia seems to just be prolonging the slaughter and hoping to be given something in return to make it stop. But - that doesn't seem likely to work. No serious minded thinkers expect Russia to honor any agreement, so why WOULDN'T Ukraine logically look at the stiatuion and conclude that the ONLY way to stop future russian aggression is to bleed out their army until there is fundamental change in Russian political leadership.
How does Russia 'win' this war? It's hard to see. Things feel very endgame, but also stagnant since life of their soldiers means absolutely nothing to the Kremlin, when they probably know the alternative is that stopping the war leads quickly and directly to total domestic collapse.
Your thoughts please.
TBH I'm unclear on the exact specifics of how you use tactical nukes, but it's something different that would end the geopolitical stalemate. If they get lucky, and after whatever Trump-NATO drama clears the West is willing to abandon Ukraine, it's a victory. That doesn't seem like the most likely outcome, but there's more chance than none.
I see no evidence Ukraine is "pulling it's punches" right now, so from the Russian side making them angrier doesn't matter. (Hey, you wanted no platitudes)
China would be pissed. Unless they invade it's a different problem for later, though. Basically, the question was narrowly defined to be about chance of victory, so it gets a bit of a narrow-minded answer. If you're asking what the best option for Russia's general welfare is, it's to make a big show of renouncing expansionism, saying sorry and going home. If you're asking what's best for Putin, at this point it might be exactly what he's doing.
Ukraine could absolutely be fighting a dirtier war than it is. They could be much more aggressive with attacking soft targets in big russian cities, car bombs, shooting up stores, assassinating government figures, blowing up civilian structures. They've already shown a capability and willingness to do this, assassinating Dugin's daughter and some high priority targets here and there over time.
But - unlike the russians, they have allies/supporters who care about moral conduct of a war and an ethical high ground, thus they don't bother with those kinds of attacks at scale. But if Russia were to start using nukes to kill large numbers of Ukrainians in a clear final act (a Final Solution, if you will) of extermination, there would be no reason for them not to fully unleash a terroristic campaign like that.
A tactical nuke is just a big shell - depending on a programmable explosive yield, it might blow up a single building or a few city blocks. Militarily, there isn't a single target that changes the trajectory of the war by being nuked - but politically and strategically, using any level of nuke probably creates way way way more problems for russia than it solves.
Why believe that? Because they clearly didn't use them at points where there were more concentrated Ukrainian defences that might at least at a simple tactical level, have an argument for their use. They could have used them against any number of fortress belt cities where Ukrainians were (or are still) stubbornly entrenched like Bakhmut, Sieverodonetsk, Avdiivka, Pokrovsk, Mynohrad etc, and expect that the Ukrainians would quickly retreat and reconsider their defensive posture for the next town down the road. But - the central contradiction here for Russia is that they insist Ukraine belongs to them - ergo is their property. Why would you nuke your own property, especially with all the other entanglements it presents. This is a war of land seizure by a mafia state looking to steal wealth and treasure from their neighbour. You can't extract value as quickly from a completely decimated moonscape, plus your reconstruction costs are higher.
They're not going to use nukes of any kind. And China probably would pull all support if they did, which would QUICKLY deindustrialize the Russian army to the point where they'd be using slingshots and sticks on meat assaults in a couple of months.
Doing war crimes is bad strategy. It's not free, it doesn't effect enemy military operations and, as we've seen in with Russia's actions in Ukraine, is effective propaganda for the enemy. If the Russian government can provoke Ukraine into it, it's absolutely in their interest to do so.
Because actual Russians care about far more than just winning. There's also degrees of loss, and MAD is a very significant one. I don't know to what degree they're worried about preserving the value of Ukraine as territory at this point, but that would be another consideration, you're right.
Again, it was a very "technically increases chance of victory" kind of answer.
Yep, probably not.
Tactical nukes are used (traditionally in doctrine) very differently then strategic nukes. Strategic nukes are mostly what you think of, large salvos of planet ending multi warheaded monsters that are built to NOT be fired (if you fire these you have lost in a way worse then any conventional defeat). Tactical ones on the other hand are meant to be used on large build ups of military forces or critical assets, think of battle enders not war enders. Where doctrine dictates you use a tactical nuke would be when russia staged the massive build up of troops before the full invasion in 2022. This is the issue with tactical nuclear weapons in this conflict, you can't really spam them without starting WWIII. In fact no one knows how many you could use before the rest of the world retaliates (France might have used one for example in the past but its never going to admit to it, but it is still a topic of discussion many years later). So lets say you have one small yield nuke to use in Ukraine? Where would you drop it? There is not a massive build up of troops, no centralized critical military infrastructure, and if you think about dropping on a city, HA (hope you like living in and of glass because that act will start the process). Actually that is another issue, nukes (even more so the smaller tactical ones) are not immune to getting shot down, so you likely can't reliably target areas under air defenses.
So to give you a TLDR, tactical nukes are smaller weapons designed to win a battle in a crucial point. Not weapons meant to end a conflict themselves, and not meant for things like glassing cities.
That makes sense. I guess what I was thinking is a strategic use of a small, tactical-ish nuke, probably framed as tactical. Basically, cross the red line but as minimally as possible, in order to put NATO on the spot.
In a way that was Russia's strategy before the full-scale invasion, and it was working flawlessly. Since then NATO has become much more determined and active, but also more unstable.
They could, but to what end? They can't hit a city or major civilian infrastructure without a outsized response (just think of if they nuked a power plant). They don't have a target that warrents a nuke other wise, unless you think hitting a local command and control will change the war. It will put NATO on the spot (the spot being very anti russian), as well as China and most of the world.