@BreadInCaptivity
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-march-7
Latest war assessment from the Institute for the Study of War.
Predicts Russia is re-grouping for a large push on Kyiv in the next few days.
Thats my reading too.
Its been far too quiet in Kyiv. They need to get Kyiv for a strategic win and moral boost. They can't afford a prolonged war, so they will go for Kyiv.
This has been said for a while that they have perhaps one shot at a real brutal hammer blow at Kyiv.
If Kyiv can withstand it Russia is largely spent. If it cannot then Russia will eventually occupy but there will be insurgency.
Lots of ifs and buts in there too.
In terms of nukes, i really keep thinking its worth stressing that Putin will only go down that route if he thinks he can make a high risk strategic gain. But most importantly that the power of nukes is less about using them and more about the fear of them.
Thus my logic goes as follows: their strategic power for Putin isnt about killing as many people as possible, its is about frightening as many people as possible and causing panic and unrest in western countries to try and force the public to get their governments to back down in some way.
If you think about it in that sense, you get different scenarios and possibilities which are much more likely than mutually assured destruction. And again they dont necessary include actually firing one.
Far more likely he'd ratchet up threats first etc etc and say he will do x, perhaps even on y date. Can you imagine the chaos of announcing that would unleash? I think it would be difficult to fully contain public fear.
Then other scenarios would be doing tests etc. Thats a pandoras box - once one country does it other may also (hello NK) but I don't think any country in the world wants that (bar perhaps NK).
We don't know what China might do yet if Russia start threatening nukes. As much as they dont want to interfere and will happily see us all fight it out between us, i do think there could be a point where China might reasonably say 'enough' too. They have plenty to gain already. And a lot to lose if they lose the stability of markets in US, EU and UK.
I also think about the option of forcing a nuclear accident. I think this is possible to avoid this 'blame' problem with nukes.
But overall I would still go with the idea that we aren't going to get mutually assured destruction. Its hard to see an exit ramp in any direction though at this stage before then. So I think thats why there is so much fear because we can't see an exit. It doesn't mean there isn't one. And this situation have a habit of suddenly have a life of their own.
Ultimately I think if we are in that path it was locked in a long time before the invasion and we are stuck on this route for now. There's not a lot we can do about it, except understand that he wants to scare us more than kill us even now, because there is no stategic advantage for him to gain by killing us in the UK. Thus try and keep a lid on your fear and dont panic. You cant do anything anyway...