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?
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
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.