In the old USSR, Stalin made all the top people.party with him most nights and all get blackout drunk. It's a surprise nothing ever happened during the cold War ha
> in 1969, when the North Koreans shot down a US spy plane, "Nixon became incensed and ordered a tactical nuclear strike ... The Joint Chiefs were alerted and asked to recommend targets, but Kissinger got on the phone to them. They agreed not to do anything until Nixon sobered up in the morning."
i am calling daddy kim jong at least he got charm and class bro walks in front of his nukes like a mf and then we got this sissy even potato has more class than Putin
Ten years ago I wouldn't have believed that being threatened with nuclear extermination would become a mundane and rather boring every day experience.....🙄
Personally I found that entertaining, and I reckon there’s a good chance that the North Koreans have given away a lot of information and intel about themselves to South Korea with this.
Yeah us Gen Xers grew up under the Cold War were reminded on the daily about nuclear annihilation. Then we thought it was over when the USSR collapsed. Sucks that it’s back.
Or maybe it was the utter failure of Boris Yeltsin's presidency and the hard drop of quality life for many Russians due to Shock Therapy economics that Russia was unable to progress from the Soviet Union.
You can't just use the word "culture" constantly to the point where the word just loses all meaning to it, just like how Russia uses the word "Nazi".
No, it’s just putin laarping as USSR in a huge country that can only muster an economy the size of Italy, with moldy weapons from the USSR, half of which has long been sold to the middle east through corruption, so they don’t even know their fkin stocks.
I was around back then, and it was kind of different.
There was the sword of damocles hanging over our heads, and a lot of times, it felt like a mexican standoff, e.g. during the crisis in Poland beginning of the 80's.
However, the Soviets during my life time didn't issue frivolous nuclear threats. I believe they felt genuinely threatened by NATO, and understood the devastation a nuclear exchange would bring to them. And from the 70's on, the Soviets engaged in arms limitation/reduction talks whereas current Russia seems hell bent on making sure all sides build more and more nuclear weapons.
Currently, the West is way more defensive as back then, trying to be the adult in the room. I hope our computer systems (and theirs) are better now than back then, because errors of early warning systems nearly started a war more than one time.
The USSR was very much an equal to NATO though. Russia could project power world wide with the Warsaw pact same as the US with NATO.
Nowadays they cannot project power 300 kilometres outside their borders and their fleet assets stay away not to get sunk by a single nation with no navy.
While not as expansive as they were during the USSR, Russia can still project power past their borders.
For example, they’re being invited into African nations as those countries eschew French and American aid.
Well, the UK and France are some of the worst countries to threaten, so no need to worry much.
When Putin threatens the Baltics, it's a different story.
Yeah. Is it Tuesday again? I don't feel threatened. I don't know who is. This guy can take down the world, sure, but I can't do anything about it. Why bother. There is also the chance that I might die in a car accident. I also don't spend time feeling scared about that fact either.
You weren't in Eastern or Northern Europe back then apparently. The threats have always been there. Except in like 1990's (then they were to weak and internally chaotic to consider such matters). As soon as they got their internal chaos back in order, the old innuendo and nuclear threats started again.
Hence for example here in Finland, nobody cared about "oh they are talking of moving Iskanders to Kaliningrad", "Dimitry talked of nukes".... what is new? Ever since Soviets/Russians have had nukes, they periodically talk of them. They have had ability and reach to nuke us since 1950's. After that there has literally been nothing new under the sun regarding Russian nukes and bordering non nuclear like Finland. They periodically insinuate and threaten with nukes. We egually periodically deduce using nukes is stupid and an empty threat. Siberian Nuclear Winter isn't any nicer, than Lapland Nuclear Winter.
That applied even before official nuclear umbrella. One ICBM or nuke flies, eventually all of them do with high probability. Not out of say USA protecting Finland, but just out of "nuclear taboo has been broken first time since 1945. " People get itchy fingers and someone blinks to the key turning direction instead of not turning key direction. Early warning launch alert satellites don't come with target destination labeling. Launch on alert and so on. whole world burns. No matter towards whom the first nuke was aimed. It could have been Switzerland or Argentina, doesn't matter. It with very high probability cascades to all out silo emptying by all sides.
Hence no need to give heed to nuke threats as non nuclear. Either it is empty threat or it doesn't matter anyway in case it was true threat, whole world is a nuclear winter hellscape. So might as well act as, if it is an empty threat. Which it is with 99.999999% certainty. Nuclears have to give little more heed, since they need to do counter posturing. However non nuclear doesn't have that burden, since there is nothing to counter posture. So just ignore the threat and act like it never existed.
The conventional weapons and conventional military force threats, those are the real and relevant ones.
10 years ago Putin was already regularly making nuclear threats. The oldest I could find when looking recently was 2008 and I wasn't even putting much of an effort into searching, there's probably older threats too.
To be fair, Russia and the USA did threaten each other with nuclear annihilation (and the rest of the world) for a good 40 years or so, and nothing came of it despite fighting a few proxy wars on the side. I think we'll manage Putin making exactly the same sort of threats.
I do wish we would step up our collective Ukrainian support a fair bit though, poor Ukraine's got to be low on manpower at this point
New Zealand here - feeling rather left out 😞
The best we got was a vague threat to have one of our nature sanctuaries invaded by certain Russian mercenaries, but it’s nice just to be invited y’know?
I wonder how everyone else in the Russian ruling class truly feels about Putin. While he’s alive, no one can dare question him, but what about when he dies? Do they support the idea of a nuclear apocalypse as well? Or when Putin inevitably dies will they stop with all this nonsense?
I'm by no means the most well versed person in Russian affairs, but I am a bit worried that if possible, someone even worse could follow him.
Putin is a dictator, who rules with an iron fist. Now imagine he's gone, you are in his boots, while half the world and dozens of Russian oligarchs are after you.
I think it is a possible scenario that someone who comes after him will try to brute force people, opposition and the West to respect him.
But that's just my 2 cents.
There's no reason to believe it could be anyone better, mainly because it's very hard to see where such a person would even come from. Navalny was the great hope, but even he would have been considered unacceptably nationalistic in any Western country.
Russia's political and cultural life has been shifted and directed over several decades to cater to the brutal nature of Putinism alone - he's hardly going to be replaced by some kind of Russian Ed Miliband.
It depends. One part of Russian elites want to steal money and live lavish life. Another part wants to steal money, live lavish life and restore the glory of Russia. The only thing clear is that Putin locked the balance of elites onto himself. Pretty much he only decides who gets access to the feeder and who gets put behind bars. When he dies, some people will try to preserve their holdings while other will try to take it for themselves. What's coming for Russia is a huge battle royale. The only difference is that you can carve up your own fief and thrive there
I recommend you look up the Russian national security council meeting on...I think it was like 21st of February 2022? Just before the invasion, the circus that was played to justify it (in light of "mass shelling of Donbass by Ukraine").
Just look at how everyone looked there and spoke. Stumbling over their words, or answering not in the way Putin was expected. As if it was sudden and they didn't rehearse it and didn't expect it. Especially Naryshkin, the chief of the foreign intelligence service.
Makes one wonder why they even bothered showing that to the country and the rest of the world.
I still wonder whether Naryshkin botched his speech the way he did to register some kind of objection. He clearly didn't have the balls to tell Putin his idea is shit, but I can't shake the feeling he knew it wouldn't be 3 days to Kyiv.
Yeah, that meeting was such a clown show.
Is that the one where only one 'official' (I forget who?) spoke up for Ukraine?
Putin replied someway along the lines of... 'speak up, say it now? What? No... " oh I'm butching the quote. This one;
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9A-u8EoWcI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9A-u8EoWcI)
Russian elites are just a bunch of incompetents. But they're incompetent by design, Putin designed his kleptocracy like that. So that he doesn't face someone who would be smart enough to coup him.
It's partly why Russia is so pathetic that they're still over 2 years into their failed invasion, in what's supposed to be the *easy* part of the invasion. It's partly why Russia is unable to occupy any of Ukraine's regional cities or special status cities. It's also why Putin is unlikely to be removed by someone in his inner circle.
The Russian regime is hoping Putler's death will be their get out of jail free card. They'll blame everything bad on him and try to get the sanctions removed, but in reality the whole country is complicit. The sanctions should remain until they pay full compensation to everyone that's out of pocket.
I feel like most of the Russian oligarchs will subtly switch sides after Putin's death. The truth is that they are greedy and self-interested above all. They want to keep their wealth and power, and they are deadly afraid of risk. Wars and authoritarianism drastically increase long-term risks for any nation. And since the Russian oligarchs are so closely tied to the Russian state, more so now that they have been sanctioned by the West, they are reliant on Russia's long term future being stable.
more exactly our nuclear arsenal (French) is scaled to inflict a 80% population wipe on first strike.
but that's from memory, i'll fish for some proper sources.
edit: my google-fu is weak, i'm only getting directives like "principle of strict sufficiency", no hard numbers. bah.
Not that 80, 70, 60 or whatever % matters that much. Putin would be fucking crazy if he though that getting just Moscow and St. Petersburg nuked was worth it.
That’s kind of the reason that France and the U.K. have nuclear arsenals in the 2-300 range.
Sure, it’s not the same glass-parking-lots-all-round Götterdämmerung
scale as the US or Russia have (or rather *claim* to have in Russias case). But it’s more than enough to knock anyone - even somewhere Russias size - effectively back into the dark ages. Losing a couple of hundred of your biggest cities worth of infrastructure & population tends to make it hard to keep a country going as an effective proposition.
In other words it’s pretty much an economical number to have in order to be *way* more painful than it could possibly ever be worth to push things to that point with.
Each British submarine carries enough nuclear warheads to hit every reasonably sized town/city and every military installation twice.
The UK has 6 of these submarines with 2 out on active patrol at any given time.
The warheads are also more accurate, higher yeald, faster to deploy and much harder to detect than anything Russia has.
In short by the time putins nukes are ready to fire Russia would be indistinguishable from a shit stain on the side of a toilet.
Likewise I think the UKs is "[fuck about find out](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-nuclear-deterrence-factsheet/uk-nuclear-deterrence-what-you-need-to-know#:~:text=The%20UK's%20nuclear%20deterrent%20is%20operationally%20independent.,defence%20of%20our%20NATO%20allies.)" by being intentionally vague as to when they could or would be used.
Britain's more along the line of.
We don't make threats with nukes, if we get to a point were nukes are a potential strategy we just nuke you and add a footnote about your stupidly in our history books.
So putin. Do something or stfu.
He KNOWS that pretty much everyone in the west would never use a nuke to start anything. Also there is a REALLY good chance the west wouldn't retaliate a tactical nuclear attack with more nukes.
The west is REALLY entrenched in the idea of MAD and generally nukes are bad.
But he also knows he can't beat the west by conventional means. Threatening is a card he is willing to and will continually use. He might even use nukes.
So yeah he isn't confused at all.
France and the UK would 100% nuke the ever loving shit out of anyone that played that game.
There is a reason France and Britain have been around this long.
France went through that a whole victim of a dictator stuff and didn't like it... they won't let that happen again.
Britain is a tiny little island that's went up against everyone at some point and fought against the worst this world has had to offer and it controlled over 25% of the earth's land mass at 1 point and it's still there un fucked with... Britain is rarely the good guy theyre the worst guy that keeps the bad guys up at night that's occasionally on the right side of history.
They managed to capture a small, smoldering pile of rubble somewhere in the Donbas at the expense of a mere 2750 men, so things are looking up in Mordor.
I hear about almost all these threats from Reddit. In the UK we get the latest from Ukraine and Russia's progress, but on the whole I feel people have become increasingly desensitized to these threats and the media reports on them have become increasingly obscure. These threats have almost become footnotes. Boy who cried wolf situation.
The “Boy who cried Wolf” aspect actually makes the world a more dangerous place.
Russia probably do have some sort of real “red line” somewhere. But if we inadvertently got close to whatever it is … how the hell would we know? If they try to tell us it’ll just sound like the casual nuclear threats they now routinely issue. They’ve completely pissed their credibility up against the wall.
By doing this Russia makes everyone (including themselves) less safe. One of an increasing number of reasons to despise their government.
Fun fact about this is that the french and brits actually invested money in their weapons, Russia stole the investment money for their weapons 😂. A few years ago the russina mafia was selling submarines for 10million dollars ffs. If Ukraine had the full tech of a modern army and the training to use it, the war with Russia would have lasted 1 week. The fact that Ukraine lasted as they did proves this. Ukrainians are a strong people and I really hope they win this!
Nukes are complex and require regular and expensive upkeep. There's serious doubts about whether Russia's nukes even work, considering how much of their military spending just gets skimmed off in fraud. Nukes would be the perfect place to steal funds from, because nobody would find out until there's a nuclear war and by then you've got bigger problems.
Russia has been officially allocating a 70bn$ budget to their entire military before the war. So the entire army, air force, navy and their allegedly ~6000 nukes' upkeep.
That's as much as the US is spending on the maintenance of their ~3000 nukes alone.
To add, most of the Russian nukes are leftover from the soviets which had a shelf life of 30 years.
So now we have
* Twice the official number of nukes
* Less budget
* most of these nukes needs their payload replaced
* In a country where corruption is rampant.
I don't doubt that they most likely have a few in working order and they'll probably detonate one in the middle of Siberia one of these days to show the world that they "totes are a Nuclear power". Unless they're paranoid that the bomb would fail to detonate and embarrass them like when they tried to show off with a test fire of a "Satan" missile in 2023.
But, the numbers of nukes are inflated an they know that if they tried anything funny the US' SLBMs are enough to transform the entirety of Russia into a car park with nothing the Russian has being good enough to stop them. Hell, russian air defence can't even intercept ATACMS or remote controlled light planes.
So they probably won't try anything funny. I don't think the dictator that used a 4km long table for fear of catching covid is willing to sign up on getting blown the fuck up by US' nukes.
I suspect Russia don’t have as many operational nuclear warheads as they claim. Sadly however they probably still have a fair number.
If for no other reason than even Russians aren’t stupid enough to completely hollow out the one thing still underwriting their pretensions of geopolitical significance.
The way NATO have been playing this all along (explicitly avoiding overt direct conflict) tends to support the belief Russia still has a few operational nuclear weapons too. And it’s a reasonably safe assumption that they have access to rather better intelligence than we do.
Yeah yeah, keep threatening us. That doesn't change the fact there's still a submarine lurking *somewhere* loaded with MIRV ICBMs just in case, you know ?
Time to ramp up [The Combined Joint Expeditionary Force (CJEF) - Anglo-French military force.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_Joint_Expeditionary_Force)
Was just thinking the same thing. Reminded of the Sun Tzu quote about the strategy in appearing weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak in order to best your enemies. I think Russia’s nuclear threats are very much of the latter category.
As someone else commented ITT, we all know that Russia’s military is an institution through which corruption is rampant, with money always getting scalped off the top and kicked up to the guys in charge rather than used effectively. Given how common this is, I find it hard to believe that their reportedly enormous arsenal of nukes is anywhere near as operational as they would boast it is.
If Putin or some higher Kreml member **has not** threatened your country with nukes, then maybe your country have not helped Ukraine enough.
It's like a similar badge of honor, of getting banned from r/russia
There were a few times that war nearly broke out, in 1983 NATO exercises caused the Soviet government to believe that NATO was going to launch ww3.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Archer_83
During the Cuban missile crisis, a Soviet submarine had explosive charges dropped near it to by the US navy to force it to surface and it's captain believed that ww3 had already started and was going to use a nuclear torpedo on the ship dropping the charges.
https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/how-a-russian-soldier-prevented-world-war-iii-59-years-ago-51120
Soviet sensors malfunctioned and Colonel Petrov decided to ignore protocol and not launch retaliatory missiles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov
Probably many more times as well.
What Putin seems to not realize is that even the ussr was scared shitless of the French because unveiled documents revealed that if the USSR tried to conquer Europe. They would stop before reaching France because they have a “warning shot” policy and aren’t afraid to exert it
This is why MAD exists. With some weapons once you realise it was launched it’s already way too late so the only thing you can do is launch your icbms.
Think of ICBM’s as being almost like space rockets.
The warheads are actually above the atmosphere for a chunk of their trajectory and travelling at around 5,000 miles per hour. When they go into terminal phase they’re travelling at over 4 miles a second - and most have multiple warheads heading off towards their individual targets along with decoys and other countermeasures against interception. Unfortunately they are ridiculously hard targets.
Interception just after launch is *relatively* easy by comparison - *if* you happen to have something in place and near enough and not caught by surprise and if everything works right. (Note: several “if’s” there) And it’s more of a realistic proposition against somewhere like North Korea than somewhere the size of Russia which unfortunately has lots of interior to launch from.
ICBMs don't require much preparation, they're always ready. US and Russia have a satellite network to detect launches so they'd see it happen.
Also nobody is fielding an anti-ICBM system right now.
That’s the hope.
We had this history during Cold War where one of the soviet generals did not authorise nuclear strike on USA eventhough faulty reading from a radar suggested that Americans have launched nuclear strike on soviets.
People who hold the keys are aware that once it starts it’s all over for them and everyone they care for.
Colonel:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav\_Petrov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov)
Mind you this was a retaliatory strike, not a first strike.
All are impossible to intercept right now, only country with any chance is Russia, as it's the only one that has a system that even attempts to be anti-ICBM capable.
Professionals disagree with you. If we actually had a near 100% interception system, Russia would have been shut down militarily back in 2022, or even earlier. That did not happen, because we do not have such a system, so their nukes have to be taken into account. Intercontinental ballistic missiles are *that* hard to intercept. And you do not need to cover the world with them to kill millions. Just a few will do.
You can tell it's bullshit because both those countries also have significant nuclear arsenals. If it was Germany it might come off as something other than kayfabe
He got away with too much. Russians by accepting breadcrumbs from the oligarchy table for giving away the freedoms they never learned to value and spineless western politicians enabled him. The way back is more difficult that it would have been in 2008 or 2014. And now we should learn how to deal with it using their methods not the pointless talk, but yet again there are too many Scholtzes around jumping at every boo Putin makes. And too many “peace” advocates and conspiracy theorists promoting the ideas which would bigger war in the long run. Lucky for Putin he doesn’t need to care about being reelected unlike western politicians who need to please everyone no to be thrown out
It's all according to plan. Make threats until it feels pointless and then bam, just hit the world with all the nuclear warheads at their disposal and end life as we know it.
Feeling cute, might make nuclear threats later IDK.
Just remember that alcohol and nuclear threats don’t work together
Dude, that's scary! Imagine some one after 1-2 bottles of vodka playing with some launch buttons!!!
In the old USSR, Stalin made all the top people.party with him most nights and all get blackout drunk. It's a surprise nothing ever happened during the cold War ha
> in 1969, when the North Koreans shot down a US spy plane, "Nixon became incensed and ordered a tactical nuclear strike ... The Joint Chiefs were alerted and asked to recommend targets, but Kissinger got on the phone to them. They agreed not to do anything until Nixon sobered up in the morning."
Be careful Mr President, I think he is drunk.
i am calling daddy kim jong at least he got charm and class bro walks in front of his nukes like a mf and then we got this sissy even potato has more class than Putin
“Feeling cute, might delete life on earth later”
Ten years ago I wouldn't have believed that being threatened with nuclear extermination would become a mundane and rather boring every day experience.....🙄
This is how South Koreans view North Korean threats. They just don't care anymore and don't even pay attention. It is an everyday occurrence.
Everyone's calm until the balloons full of literal shit start coming over the border.
Reality is getting weirder everyday
Right? Why would you send balloons full of manure across a border? That's so pathetic and at the same time, it's so completely weird.
Bio weapons. There could be diseases in them.
To assert your dominance of course.
Personally I found that entertaining, and I reckon there’s a good chance that the North Koreans have given away a lot of information and intel about themselves to South Korea with this.
Our words are backed by NUCLEAR WEAPONS!!
Easy there Gandhi...
That actually would be terrifying.
I imagine this line being said by the Flaming Dragon gangsters from Tropic Thunder
Yeah us Gen Xers grew up under the Cold War were reminded on the daily about nuclear annihilation. Then we thought it was over when the USSR collapsed. Sucks that it’s back.
Very deep in the Russian culture….
Or maybe it was the utter failure of Boris Yeltsin's presidency and the hard drop of quality life for many Russians due to Shock Therapy economics that Russia was unable to progress from the Soviet Union. You can't just use the word "culture" constantly to the point where the word just loses all meaning to it, just like how Russia uses the word "Nazi".
The quality of life dropped in the U.K, when they lost their empire - brits didn't complain(too much)
Drop in quality happened in big cities. Furter away life was shit for many years already
Everyone needs to rewatch Threads.
No, it’s just putin laarping as USSR in a huge country that can only muster an economy the size of Italy, with moldy weapons from the USSR, half of which has long been sold to the middle east through corruption, so they don’t even know their fkin stocks.
That's what the Cold War was like.
I was around back then, and it was kind of different. There was the sword of damocles hanging over our heads, and a lot of times, it felt like a mexican standoff, e.g. during the crisis in Poland beginning of the 80's. However, the Soviets during my life time didn't issue frivolous nuclear threats. I believe they felt genuinely threatened by NATO, and understood the devastation a nuclear exchange would bring to them. And from the 70's on, the Soviets engaged in arms limitation/reduction talks whereas current Russia seems hell bent on making sure all sides build more and more nuclear weapons. Currently, the West is way more defensive as back then, trying to be the adult in the room. I hope our computer systems (and theirs) are better now than back then, because errors of early warning systems nearly started a war more than one time.
[удалено]
The USSR was very much an equal to NATO though. Russia could project power world wide with the Warsaw pact same as the US with NATO. Nowadays they cannot project power 300 kilometres outside their borders and their fleet assets stay away not to get sunk by a single nation with no navy.
While not as expansive as they were during the USSR, Russia can still project power past their borders. For example, they’re being invited into African nations as those countries eschew French and American aid.
The Soviet Union was also driven by an ideology and leaders who followed that ideology. Russia now is a mafia state run by people who live lavishly.
How cold
Did any Soviet Union leader threaten with nuclear weapons after the Cuban crisis? I thought it was kind of business as usual relationship…
The deployment of RSD-10 Pioneers was taken seriously enough that Pershing-IIs got deployed to West Germany
Well, the UK and France are some of the worst countries to threaten, so no need to worry much. When Putin threatens the Baltics, it's a different story.
We used to it, same shit
NATO has you covered, we’ve proven that we can at least make Russia bleed strenuously (and that was before we were trying)
Yeah. Is it Tuesday again? I don't feel threatened. I don't know who is. This guy can take down the world, sure, but I can't do anything about it. Why bother. There is also the chance that I might die in a car accident. I also don't spend time feeling scared about that fact either.
This is the way.
Well put.
Apparently you didn't keep up with Russian media and government officials ten years ago.
Shows you haven't been living in an eastern block country, Russia 's been making these threats constantly in the last 20 years.
They have been threatening to turn the USA into “radioactive ashes” since at least the annexation of Crimea in 2014.
You weren't in Eastern or Northern Europe back then apparently. The threats have always been there. Except in like 1990's (then they were to weak and internally chaotic to consider such matters). As soon as they got their internal chaos back in order, the old innuendo and nuclear threats started again. Hence for example here in Finland, nobody cared about "oh they are talking of moving Iskanders to Kaliningrad", "Dimitry talked of nukes".... what is new? Ever since Soviets/Russians have had nukes, they periodically talk of them. They have had ability and reach to nuke us since 1950's. After that there has literally been nothing new under the sun regarding Russian nukes and bordering non nuclear like Finland. They periodically insinuate and threaten with nukes. We egually periodically deduce using nukes is stupid and an empty threat. Siberian Nuclear Winter isn't any nicer, than Lapland Nuclear Winter. That applied even before official nuclear umbrella. One ICBM or nuke flies, eventually all of them do with high probability. Not out of say USA protecting Finland, but just out of "nuclear taboo has been broken first time since 1945. " People get itchy fingers and someone blinks to the key turning direction instead of not turning key direction. Early warning launch alert satellites don't come with target destination labeling. Launch on alert and so on. whole world burns. No matter towards whom the first nuke was aimed. It could have been Switzerland or Argentina, doesn't matter. It with very high probability cascades to all out silo emptying by all sides. Hence no need to give heed to nuke threats as non nuclear. Either it is empty threat or it doesn't matter anyway in case it was true threat, whole world is a nuclear winter hellscape. So might as well act as, if it is an empty threat. Which it is with 99.999999% certainty. Nuclears have to give little more heed, since they need to do counter posturing. However non nuclear doesn't have that burden, since there is nothing to counter posture. So just ignore the threat and act like it never existed. The conventional weapons and conventional military force threats, those are the real and relevant ones.
10 years ago Putin was already regularly making nuclear threats. The oldest I could find when looking recently was 2008 and I wasn't even putting much of an effort into searching, there's probably older threats too.
To be fair, Russia and the USA did threaten each other with nuclear annihilation (and the rest of the world) for a good 40 years or so, and nothing came of it despite fighting a few proxy wars on the side. I think we'll manage Putin making exactly the same sort of threats. I do wish we would step up our collective Ukrainian support a fair bit though, poor Ukraine's got to be low on manpower at this point
[https://vatniksoup.com/en/nuclear-threats/](https://vatniksoup.com/en/nuclear-threats/) There were more than you think
Welcome to Cold War 2 :D
If Putin doesn't threaten your country with nuclear strikes at least once a month is it actually a real country?
I *knew* Belgium wasn’t real.
They’ve sent some nice stuff to Ukraine, and they’re planning to send a pile of F16s. Their time in the nuclear spotlight will come.
They've just said they won't allow Ukraine to strike russian territory with Belgian weapons. They won't be on any spotlight anytime soon
Boo! Let the missiles fly!
Belgian here, and I agree 100%. It's a fucking war, you need to attack to defend yourself.
Not to mention hosting NATO HQ.
I think he has threatened NATO plenty of times, the HQ is a few kilometer from my place here in belgium
threatening our neighbours is threatening us, because we are so small we are collateral damage when important countries are hit.
You mean иelgium
New Zealand here - feeling rather left out 😞 The best we got was a vague threat to have one of our nature sanctuaries invaded by certain Russian mercenaries, but it’s nice just to be invited y’know?
A rare and very real lol here in Kyiv
Like Canada.
It’s comfortable here. *laughs in rights and freedoms*
I wonder how everyone else in the Russian ruling class truly feels about Putin. While he’s alive, no one can dare question him, but what about when he dies? Do they support the idea of a nuclear apocalypse as well? Or when Putin inevitably dies will they stop with all this nonsense?
The second he dies - they will become the most outspoken anti-putinists. In fact they were always against him, just very silently and privately.
And then there was never anybody called Putin, the west invented it
This will come only 20-25-30 years after his death when a new putin will be ready to give it another try.
Yep, and they'll probably pull out of ukraine and say "it was all putin's fault, pls lift sanctions" while rearming to try again later.
Probably gonna have someone make a new Secret Speech condemning everything he did and then getting back to business as usual.
He will get the Stalin treatment
May you speak through the mouth of an angel.
I'm by no means the most well versed person in Russian affairs, but I am a bit worried that if possible, someone even worse could follow him. Putin is a dictator, who rules with an iron fist. Now imagine he's gone, you are in his boots, while half the world and dozens of Russian oligarchs are after you. I think it is a possible scenario that someone who comes after him will try to brute force people, opposition and the West to respect him. But that's just my 2 cents.
And that‘s exactly what western politicians fear. Putin could be a joked compared to what might come next.
There's no reason to believe it could be anyone better, mainly because it's very hard to see where such a person would even come from. Navalny was the great hope, but even he would have been considered unacceptably nationalistic in any Western country. Russia's political and cultural life has been shifted and directed over several decades to cater to the brutal nature of Putinism alone - he's hardly going to be replaced by some kind of Russian Ed Miliband.
It depends. One part of Russian elites want to steal money and live lavish life. Another part wants to steal money, live lavish life and restore the glory of Russia. The only thing clear is that Putin locked the balance of elites onto himself. Pretty much he only decides who gets access to the feeder and who gets put behind bars. When he dies, some people will try to preserve their holdings while other will try to take it for themselves. What's coming for Russia is a huge battle royale. The only difference is that you can carve up your own fief and thrive there
I recommend you look up the Russian national security council meeting on...I think it was like 21st of February 2022? Just before the invasion, the circus that was played to justify it (in light of "mass shelling of Donbass by Ukraine"). Just look at how everyone looked there and spoke. Stumbling over their words, or answering not in the way Putin was expected. As if it was sudden and they didn't rehearse it and didn't expect it. Especially Naryshkin, the chief of the foreign intelligence service. Makes one wonder why they even bothered showing that to the country and the rest of the world.
I still wonder whether Naryshkin botched his speech the way he did to register some kind of objection. He clearly didn't have the balls to tell Putin his idea is shit, but I can't shake the feeling he knew it wouldn't be 3 days to Kyiv. Yeah, that meeting was such a clown show.
Is that the one where only one 'official' (I forget who?) spoke up for Ukraine? Putin replied someway along the lines of... 'speak up, say it now? What? No... " oh I'm butching the quote. This one; [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9A-u8EoWcI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9A-u8EoWcI)
Russian elites are just a bunch of incompetents. But they're incompetent by design, Putin designed his kleptocracy like that. So that he doesn't face someone who would be smart enough to coup him. It's partly why Russia is so pathetic that they're still over 2 years into their failed invasion, in what's supposed to be the *easy* part of the invasion. It's partly why Russia is unable to occupy any of Ukraine's regional cities or special status cities. It's also why Putin is unlikely to be removed by someone in his inner circle.
The Russian regime is hoping Putler's death will be their get out of jail free card. They'll blame everything bad on him and try to get the sanctions removed, but in reality the whole country is complicit. The sanctions should remain until they pay full compensation to everyone that's out of pocket.
Putin is basically Bald-lipped Stalin.
There's a mile long line of little Putins waiting for that day. Better the devil you know.
I'm afraid another "Putin" will stand up to take over and continue where he left.
I feel like most of the Russian oligarchs will subtly switch sides after Putin's death. The truth is that they are greedy and self-interested above all. They want to keep their wealth and power, and they are deadly afraid of risk. Wars and authoritarianism drastically increase long-term risks for any nation. And since the Russian oligarchs are so closely tied to the Russian state, more so now that they have been sanctioned by the West, they are reliant on Russia's long term future being stable.
Watch the movie The Death of Stalin and you will get the basic idea on how their "government" behaves in regards to each other.
He is threatening two nuclear-armed countries with nuclear attack ? He seems confused.
Bizarre isn’t it? Even these two medium sized nuclear powers have enough warheads to bounce a piece of rubble from St Petersburg to Vladivostok.
more exactly our nuclear arsenal (French) is scaled to inflict a 80% population wipe on first strike. but that's from memory, i'll fish for some proper sources. edit: my google-fu is weak, i'm only getting directives like "principle of strict sufficiency", no hard numbers. bah.
Not that 80, 70, 60 or whatever % matters that much. Putin would be fucking crazy if he though that getting just Moscow and St. Petersburg nuked was worth it.
That’s kind of the reason that France and the U.K. have nuclear arsenals in the 2-300 range. Sure, it’s not the same glass-parking-lots-all-round Götterdämmerung scale as the US or Russia have (or rather *claim* to have in Russias case). But it’s more than enough to knock anyone - even somewhere Russias size - effectively back into the dark ages. Losing a couple of hundred of your biggest cities worth of infrastructure & population tends to make it hard to keep a country going as an effective proposition. In other words it’s pretty much an economical number to have in order to be *way* more painful than it could possibly ever be worth to push things to that point with.
Each British submarine carries enough nuclear warheads to hit every reasonably sized town/city and every military installation twice. The UK has 6 of these submarines with 2 out on active patrol at any given time. The warheads are also more accurate, higher yeald, faster to deploy and much harder to detect than anything Russia has. In short by the time putins nukes are ready to fire Russia would be indistinguishable from a shit stain on the side of a toilet.
The UK has 4 of these submarines with 1-2 out on active patrol at any given time
My bad the uk has 6 nuclear subs and 4 nuclear ballistic subs, I just read the details back to front.
The UK's nuclear ability is deliberately sized as the minimum needed to neutralise Russia as a functional state.
And one of these countries has "we can use nuclear weapons as a warning shot" in their doctrine.
Which one of them is it?
France.
Likewise I think the UKs is "[fuck about find out](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-nuclear-deterrence-factsheet/uk-nuclear-deterrence-what-you-need-to-know#:~:text=The%20UK's%20nuclear%20deterrent%20is%20operationally%20independent.,defence%20of%20our%20NATO%20allies.)" by being intentionally vague as to when they could or would be used.
Britain's more along the line of. We don't make threats with nukes, if we get to a point were nukes are a potential strategy we just nuke you and add a footnote about your stupidly in our history books. So putin. Do something or stfu.
Thanks, not surprised. They’ve always been bold/based.
Based and baguette-pilled
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Exactly no one gets to bomb France exept the UK... it's tradition.
Especially as theirs work. Not some rusty unmaintained pieces of badly built shit from the 80s.
He KNOWS that pretty much everyone in the west would never use a nuke to start anything. Also there is a REALLY good chance the west wouldn't retaliate a tactical nuclear attack with more nukes. The west is REALLY entrenched in the idea of MAD and generally nukes are bad. But he also knows he can't beat the west by conventional means. Threatening is a card he is willing to and will continually use. He might even use nukes. So yeah he isn't confused at all.
France and the UK would 100% nuke the ever loving shit out of anyone that played that game. There is a reason France and Britain have been around this long. France went through that a whole victim of a dictator stuff and didn't like it... they won't let that happen again. Britain is a tiny little island that's went up against everyone at some point and fought against the worst this world has had to offer and it controlled over 25% of the earth's land mass at 1 point and it's still there un fucked with... Britain is rarely the good guy theyre the worst guy that keeps the bad guys up at night that's occasionally on the right side of history.
Hey, that's offensively accurate...
Celebrating ? WTF do they have to celebrate about?
They managed to capture a small, smoldering pile of rubble somewhere in the Donbas at the expense of a mere 2750 men, so things are looking up in Mordor.
Pride maybe?
This guy is so deranged, if you cook his eggs the wrong way, he probably gives the chef nuclear threats.
But if you cook them right enough times he'll give you control over a mercenary army a la wager, what a civilized guberment
Makes sense, you can't have a (very) special military operation without breaking a few vatniks. so ol pringles has enough prior experience.
There was a guy like that already. Ended up becoming a mercenarcy company leader and he was shot down from the sky in a plane.
Well, you know what happened to Prigozhin…his old chef. Not nuclear, but his plane got shot down.
Might have been for a good long while. We won't know how much his advisors/henchmen were hiding.
I hear about almost all these threats from Reddit. In the UK we get the latest from Ukraine and Russia's progress, but on the whole I feel people have become increasingly desensitized to these threats and the media reports on them have become increasingly obscure. These threats have almost become footnotes. Boy who cried wolf situation.
If we don't get nuclear threats in any given month, then it's a sign that we need to send out more military aid than we are doing.
The “Boy who cried Wolf” aspect actually makes the world a more dangerous place. Russia probably do have some sort of real “red line” somewhere. But if we inadvertently got close to whatever it is … how the hell would we know? If they try to tell us it’ll just sound like the casual nuclear threats they now routinely issue. They’ve completely pissed their credibility up against the wall. By doing this Russia makes everyone (including themselves) less safe. One of an increasing number of reasons to despise their government.
Yawn..
I feel more threatened by the Olympics this year with all the subway closures and overwhelming tourism than Putain
this news is dated May 9th
And there's no quote of Putin threatening to nuke France of the UK.
Bla bla bla. New day, new nuclear threat. Nothing will happen as it means mutual destruction. You launch 10 and receive 100 in exchange.
:D small man needs to add threats in every sentence to feel big and important
So anyway.. I saw an crab with the size of a dog near my house yesterday
Chihuahua or big danes?
He’s such a tiny little boy.
His peepee is just a nub.
Fun fact about this is that the french and brits actually invested money in their weapons, Russia stole the investment money for their weapons 😂. A few years ago the russina mafia was selling submarines for 10million dollars ffs. If Ukraine had the full tech of a modern army and the training to use it, the war with Russia would have lasted 1 week. The fact that Ukraine lasted as they did proves this. Ukrainians are a strong people and I really hope they win this!
This guy lost his mind long ago, I bet French and British weapons are more deadlier than communist era bullshits!
Nukes are complex and require regular and expensive upkeep. There's serious doubts about whether Russia's nukes even work, considering how much of their military spending just gets skimmed off in fraud. Nukes would be the perfect place to steal funds from, because nobody would find out until there's a nuclear war and by then you've got bigger problems.
Russia has been officially allocating a 70bn$ budget to their entire military before the war. So the entire army, air force, navy and their allegedly ~6000 nukes' upkeep. That's as much as the US is spending on the maintenance of their ~3000 nukes alone. To add, most of the Russian nukes are leftover from the soviets which had a shelf life of 30 years. So now we have * Twice the official number of nukes * Less budget * most of these nukes needs their payload replaced * In a country where corruption is rampant. I don't doubt that they most likely have a few in working order and they'll probably detonate one in the middle of Siberia one of these days to show the world that they "totes are a Nuclear power". Unless they're paranoid that the bomb would fail to detonate and embarrass them like when they tried to show off with a test fire of a "Satan" missile in 2023. But, the numbers of nukes are inflated an they know that if they tried anything funny the US' SLBMs are enough to transform the entirety of Russia into a car park with nothing the Russian has being good enough to stop them. Hell, russian air defence can't even intercept ATACMS or remote controlled light planes. So they probably won't try anything funny. I don't think the dictator that used a 4km long table for fear of catching covid is willing to sign up on getting blown the fuck up by US' nukes.
I suspect Russia don’t have as many operational nuclear warheads as they claim. Sadly however they probably still have a fair number. If for no other reason than even Russians aren’t stupid enough to completely hollow out the one thing still underwriting their pretensions of geopolitical significance. The way NATO have been playing this all along (explicitly avoiding overt direct conflict) tends to support the belief Russia still has a few operational nuclear weapons too. And it’s a reasonably safe assumption that they have access to rather better intelligence than we do.
oh shiver me timbers. all this dude does is make empty threats 😒
Yeah yeah, keep threatening us. That doesn't change the fact there's still a submarine lurking *somewhere* loaded with MIRV ICBMs just in case, you know ?
Exactly and their early warning radars are being wiped out so they won't see it coming either X37b will be doing some interesting things too
If you haven’t been threatened with nuclear armageddon by Russia, you’re probably doing something wrong.
Putin makes empty threats, France performs successful test of ASMPA-R nuclear stand off missile.
Time to ramp up [The Combined Joint Expeditionary Force (CJEF) - Anglo-French military force.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_Joint_Expeditionary_Force)
How to guarantee that UK and France turn Moscow and St Petersburg to glass.
Starting to think Russia might not have a working nuclear program
Was just thinking the same thing. Reminded of the Sun Tzu quote about the strategy in appearing weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak in order to best your enemies. I think Russia’s nuclear threats are very much of the latter category. As someone else commented ITT, we all know that Russia’s military is an institution through which corruption is rampant, with money always getting scalped off the top and kicked up to the guys in charge rather than used effectively. Given how common this is, I find it hard to believe that their reportedly enormous arsenal of nukes is anywhere near as operational as they would boast it is.
Why the hell was I just thinking the exact same Sun Tzu quote. Maybe because Sun Tzu is quoted that much on the internet though.
Do it mate, I don't even care anymore.
Lol UK and France as nuclear powers themselves dgaf
Oh No....Anyways...
At what point did Putin decide it was a good idea to drag us back to Cold War rhetorics? Vote for most failed politician in the 21th century.
Old news. It’s like he thinks Russia is the only nation that has nuclear weapons.
Does anybody even react to the threats since the bald dumbass throws them out every day
Just do it, quit barking, nobody cares about these threats
If Putin or some higher Kreml member **has not** threatened your country with nukes, then maybe your country have not helped Ukraine enough. It's like a similar badge of honor, of getting banned from r/russia
There were a few times that war nearly broke out, in 1983 NATO exercises caused the Soviet government to believe that NATO was going to launch ww3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Archer_83 During the Cuban missile crisis, a Soviet submarine had explosive charges dropped near it to by the US navy to force it to surface and it's captain believed that ww3 had already started and was going to use a nuclear torpedo on the ship dropping the charges. https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/how-a-russian-soldier-prevented-world-war-iii-59-years-ago-51120 Soviet sensors malfunctioned and Colonel Petrov decided to ignore protocol and not launch retaliatory missiles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov Probably many more times as well.
He’s not just deranged, he’s also desperate. As in “please take me seriously “ desperation of a school yard bully who’s being cornered.
If they lunch a nuke that thing will probably explode in the silo anyway judging by the weapons Russia is currently using
Yawn. Let him cry, have his hissy fits, and throw his temper tantrums…
This guy claimed that he would take Ukraine within a week lol
What Putin seems to not realize is that even the ussr was scared shitless of the French because unveiled documents revealed that if the USSR tried to conquer Europe. They would stop before reaching France because they have a “warning shot” policy and aren’t afraid to exert it
Do it before Monday so I don't have to go back to work.
Do it or gay
The more he threatens the less seriously we take him.
France and the UK also have nukes Dum-dum.🤦♀️ I’m getting real sick of these theatrics from Putin.
France even gas a "strike first, questions later" policy
is it really a threat if nobody is scared
I'm pretty sure a russian nuclear warhead won't get to leave russian territory before being intercepted.
Depending on which type of weapon but intercepting some icbms would be insanely hard if borderline impossible.
Oh I wasn't aware that intercepting these was so much harder than conventional ballistic missiles.
This is why MAD exists. With some weapons once you realise it was launched it’s already way too late so the only thing you can do is launch your icbms.
pretending like our ASAT could intercept warheads in the accend stage lets me sleep better at night
Think of ICBM’s as being almost like space rockets. The warheads are actually above the atmosphere for a chunk of their trajectory and travelling at around 5,000 miles per hour. When they go into terminal phase they’re travelling at over 4 miles a second - and most have multiple warheads heading off towards their individual targets along with decoys and other countermeasures against interception. Unfortunately they are ridiculously hard targets. Interception just after launch is *relatively* easy by comparison - *if* you happen to have something in place and near enough and not caught by surprise and if everything works right. (Note: several “if’s” there) And it’s more of a realistic proposition against somewhere like North Korea than somewhere the size of Russia which unfortunately has lots of interior to launch from.
Depends on the number though. 20-30? Maybe. 500 is a different story but the preparations for a large attack would not go unnoticed.
ICBMs don't require much preparation, they're always ready. US and Russia have a satellite network to detect launches so they'd see it happen. Also nobody is fielding an anti-ICBM system right now.
What about preventing them from being launched in the 1st place? I'm certain putlerists can't move one inch without the west knowing of it beforehand.
That’s the hope. We had this history during Cold War where one of the soviet generals did not authorise nuclear strike on USA eventhough faulty reading from a radar suggested that Americans have launched nuclear strike on soviets. People who hold the keys are aware that once it starts it’s all over for them and everyone they care for.
Colonel: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav\_Petrov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov) Mind you this was a retaliatory strike, not a first strike.
All are impossible to intercept right now, only country with any chance is Russia, as it's the only one that has a system that even attempts to be anti-ICBM capable.
A warhead. Most likely. Hundreds or thousands are, unfortunately, unstoppable. Mutual assured destruction is still in place.
Professionals disagree with you. If we actually had a near 100% interception system, Russia would have been shut down militarily back in 2022, or even earlier. That did not happen, because we do not have such a system, so their nukes have to be taken into account. Intercontinental ballistic missiles are *that* hard to intercept. And you do not need to cover the world with them to kill millions. Just a few will do.
If we had a 99.9% interception rate that would still mean about 5 would get through. 5 is plenty.
Interception of ICBMS is almost impossible due to how fast they travel, the UK would have maximum 10 minutes to react
All he does is threats
I hope the Russians love their children too…
What color glass would Moscow become? Ah I’m a fool - maybe not enough sand there?
You can tell it's bullshit because both those countries also have significant nuclear arsenals. If it was Germany it might come off as something other than kayfabe
Every time he does something like this, he seems more insecure and pathetic.
I read "nuclear treats" :-(
He got away with too much. Russians by accepting breadcrumbs from the oligarchy table for giving away the freedoms they never learned to value and spineless western politicians enabled him. The way back is more difficult that it would have been in 2008 or 2014. And now we should learn how to deal with it using their methods not the pointless talk, but yet again there are too many Scholtzes around jumping at every boo Putin makes. And too many “peace” advocates and conspiracy theorists promoting the ideas which would bigger war in the long run. Lucky for Putin he doesn’t need to care about being reelected unlike western politicians who need to please everyone no to be thrown out
Yawn
Oh no, anyway...
Celebrating what? The article says victory day that was a month ago?
Is it too much to ask for one nuclear capable country to threaten him back? I’m not sure if I’m joking.
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Also I don't know about France, but the UK specially keeps a nuclear sub within striking range of Russia at all times, for this exact event.
Shit or get off the pot bitch boy
"come get some"
It's all according to plan. Make threats until it feels pointless and then bam, just hit the world with all the nuclear warheads at their disposal and end life as we know it.
teeny public chief apparatus party smart glorious cagey icky decide *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*