We’re still only a few hours post the bridge attack, but worth noting that when given the opportunity to massively escalate with a ‘red line’ being crossed, the Russian government are talking about how this was a terrorist attack and traffic will be up and running within hours (playing down the impact). This suggests to me they’re extremely unwilling to move up to tactical nuclear weapons right now.
Also, please correct me if I am wrong, some parts of the annexed territories—from certain perspective, now a part of Russia—were already regained by Ukraine—which from that perspective means Ukraine (with the support of NATO) attacking and successfully conquering parts of Russia’s territory. And yet, no nukes so far.
My impression of the annexation is that it is a way to move the mobilized troops to the front without having to internally declare war, or break Russian law (which only allows mobilization to protect Russia, as I understand it).
As I understand, Russia declaratively annexed territories not under Russian control even at the time of declaration. This is one reason I thought nuclear border defense rhetoric was bluffing.
This is correct. They will always downplay Ukraine’s successes, explaining them as either terrorist attacks or “smoking accidents”. And yes, as Viliam says, Russia is now officially losing territory every day and nobody cares. They prefer to have ambiguous borders.
To understand Putin, you have to imagine a petty crime boss who accidentally got big. He’s just a thug. “It’s not a bluff” is the telltale sign that his threat is a 100% 99.999999% bluff. When he plans to do something, he and his minions always deny it first. He will go to great lengths to continue without nuclear weapons.
All of this means that the 30% chance of kaboom is way way too high. It’s currently closer to 3% or even 0.3%.
Moreover, the probability that a strike will be ordered but not occur is quite high. You don’t just drop a nuke and hope it works. The technology is complex and there have been no nuclear tests since 1990. Russia’s impressive-looking nuclear arsenal would take a fortune to have been properly maintained all this time. A huge percentage of that money ended up in the pockets of the maintainers. This is the Russian Way. So either the technology can fail or, more likely still, people can do something wrong. Incompetence is the key word in the analysis of most Russian failures in this war so far.
That said, he won’t back down and the probability of kaboom could increase with Putin’s desperation. There will be clear signs (e.g. new nuclear tests), so we’ll have time to prepare. But it’s still dangerous. The winning strategy for the West is to kill him. I hope the CIA, MI6 and other professionals understand this. They have to kill him one day and I really hope it happens soon enough.
Russian Way is imperceptible to most Western experts because they never lived in USSR. They don’t know how corrupt & in shambles the system actually was. As a result “Russia is very strong and powerful” is a stereotype that just refuses to die.
A look at the battlefield:
Russian army is undertrained, attacking civilians for shock & terror
Gains at the start of the war were made by using large quantity of weapons & people, but those were lacking in quality. And now the quantity is also lacking
Crimean bridge and air base attacks are a case of “Emperor has no clothes” regarding conventional Russian defence
A look at the internal situation in Russia:
Warlords (Prygozhin and Kadyrov) preparing to take over if Putin slips
FSB and MoD internal quarrels
absolutely massive emigration of young Russians (> 500 thousands already left)
children of Russian elites (IIRC Putin & Lavrov too) enjoying their carefree lives in EU and US
incompetence (which you highlighted) in aerospace / military sector:
failures of legacy products like Soyuz or Proton
uselessness of recently developed products (Armata)
ammunition stored in conditions that increase the probability of failure
inventory numbers exaggerated because corruption and black market sales
My opinion: Metaculus is better gauge of nuclear danger than the OP post, people did a good job there predicting that the the war will start in February 2022.
Max’s post is still too emotional and his probabilities are mostly influenced by that
Unfortunately, the weaknesses of modern Russia, especially with regard to conventional warfare, work to increase the chance of nuclear weapons use as an ultima ratio. And the scenario of triggering first against Ukraine almost automatically involves the following triggering against NATO.
Have you “mentally wargamed” the CIA/MI6 option? Who would replace him? Would they be better or worse? How would Russian citizens respond? Is there anything like an automated event that is suppressed daily by Putin while he is alive but that would be triggered if he dies?
Since you seem to have thought a lot of this through:
Do you have thoughts on the possibility of pre-existing weapons caches in the US or Europe that could be activated remotely by Russia? (Nuclear, chemical, biological, etc)?
Similarly, it seems that every few years we discover Russians spies in the US, so the probability is high there’s some in the US active now. In the event of a war, would they act like a sleeper cell? Would kinds of things might they do?
Another thing that could be interesting with spies is what they can do before a US/NATO-Russian war. If the Russian had one or more top level spies in the US security establishment or in NATO (as they, or their East German satellite, had during the cold war), then it could increase or decrease the risk of Russia using nuclear weapons.
If Russia got signals from inside US/NATO that the West was really willing to retaliate militarily in the case of a Russian nuclear strike on Ukraine, then this information could decrease Russia’s willingness to escalate. If, however, Russia got signals from inside US/NATO that the West was not willing to use military force as an answer to a Russian nuclear strike on Ukraine, then this information could increase Russia’s will to escalate.
He says putin used information from Russian spy in the CIA to blackmail Yeltsin.
If we discovered any of them currently active, I wonder if we could deliberately feed them bits of misinformation to steer Putin one way or another?
Or maybe if the undiscovered spies could become something like ironic double agents on their own if the spies are against escalation? On their own imitative they steer things towards de-escalation? Or maybe defect at the last moment to try and stop escalation?
I don’t think their bombing of civilian infrastructure can be considered a military escalation.
An official declaration of war and martial law in Russia would be an escalation (albeit not scary).
Nuclear weapons testing would be an escalation (slightly scary, but still very far from an actual attack).
Ordinary terrorism, by contrast, is just the default response, exactly the type of revenge for his favorite bridge that everyone expected from this particular dictator.
We’re still only a few hours post the bridge attack, but worth noting that when given the opportunity to massively escalate with a ‘red line’ being crossed, the Russian government are talking about how this was a terrorist attack and traffic will be up and running within hours (playing down the impact). This suggests to me they’re extremely unwilling to move up to tactical nuclear weapons right now.
Also, please correct me if I am wrong, some parts of the annexed territories—from certain perspective, now a part of Russia—were already regained by Ukraine—which from that perspective means Ukraine (with the support of NATO) attacking and successfully conquering parts of Russia’s territory. And yet, no nukes so far.
My impression of the annexation is that it is a way to move the mobilized troops to the front without having to internally declare war, or break Russian law (which only allows mobilization to protect Russia, as I understand it).
As I understand, Russia declaratively annexed territories not under Russian control even at the time of declaration. This is one reason I thought nuclear border defense rhetoric was bluffing.
This is correct. They will always downplay Ukraine’s successes, explaining them as either terrorist attacks or “smoking accidents”. And yes, as Viliam says, Russia is now officially losing territory every day and nobody cares. They prefer to have ambiguous borders.
To understand Putin, you have to imagine a petty crime boss who accidentally got big. He’s just a thug. “It’s not a bluff” is the telltale sign that his threat is a
100%99.999999% bluff. When he plans to do something, he and his minions always deny it first. He will go to great lengths to continue without nuclear weapons.All of this means that the 30% chance of kaboom is way way too high. It’s currently closer to 3% or even 0.3%.
Moreover, the probability that a strike will be ordered but not occur is quite high. You don’t just drop a nuke and hope it works. The technology is complex and there have been no nuclear tests since 1990. Russia’s impressive-looking nuclear arsenal would take a fortune to have been properly maintained all this time. A huge percentage of that money ended up in the pockets of the maintainers. This is the Russian Way. So either the technology can fail or, more likely still, people can do something wrong. Incompetence is the key word in the analysis of most Russian failures in this war so far.
That said, he won’t back down and the probability of kaboom could increase with Putin’s desperation. There will be clear signs (e.g. new nuclear tests), so we’ll have time to prepare. But it’s still dangerous. The winning strategy for the West is to kill him. I hope the CIA, MI6 and other professionals understand this. They have to kill him one day and I really hope it happens soon enough.
Russian Way is imperceptible to most Western experts because they never lived in USSR. They don’t know how corrupt & in shambles the system actually was. As a result “Russia is very strong and powerful” is a stereotype that just refuses to die.
A look at the battlefield:
Russian army is undertrained, attacking civilians for shock & terror
Gains at the start of the war were made by using large quantity of weapons & people, but those were lacking in quality. And now the quantity is also lacking
Crimean bridge and air base attacks are a case of “Emperor has no clothes” regarding conventional Russian defence
A look at the internal situation in Russia:
Warlords (Prygozhin and Kadyrov) preparing to take over if Putin slips
FSB and MoD internal quarrels
absolutely massive emigration of young Russians (> 500 thousands already left)
children of Russian elites (IIRC Putin & Lavrov too) enjoying their carefree lives in EU and US
incompetence (which you highlighted) in aerospace / military sector:
failures of legacy products like Soyuz or Proton
uselessness of recently developed products (Armata)
ammunition stored in conditions that increase the probability of failure
inventory numbers exaggerated because corruption and black market sales
My opinion: Metaculus is better gauge of nuclear danger than the OP post, people did a good job there predicting that the the war will start in February 2022.
Max’s post is still too emotional and his probabilities are mostly influenced by that
Unfortunately, the weaknesses of modern Russia, especially with regard to conventional warfare, work to increase the chance of nuclear weapons use as an ultima ratio. And the scenario of triggering first against Ukraine almost automatically involves the following triggering against NATO.
Have you “mentally wargamed” the CIA/MI6 option? Who would replace him? Would they be better or worse? How would Russian citizens respond? Is there anything like an automated event that is suppressed daily by Putin while he is alive but that would be triggered if he dies?
Since you seem to have thought a lot of this through:
Do you have thoughts on the possibility of pre-existing weapons caches in the US or Europe that could be activated remotely by Russia? (Nuclear, chemical, biological, etc)?
Similarly, it seems that every few years we discover Russians spies in the US, so the probability is high there’s some in the US active now. In the event of a war, would they act like a sleeper cell? Would kinds of things might they do?
Another thing that could be interesting with spies is what they can do before a US/NATO-Russian war. If the Russian had one or more top level spies in the US security establishment or in NATO (as they, or their East German satellite, had during the cold war), then it could increase or decrease the risk of Russia using nuclear weapons.
If Russia got signals from inside US/NATO that the West was really willing to retaliate militarily in the case of a Russian nuclear strike on Ukraine, then this information could decrease Russia’s willingness to escalate. If, however, Russia got signals from inside US/NATO that the West was not willing to use military force as an answer to a Russian nuclear strike on Ukraine, then this information could increase Russia’s will to escalate.
These are interesting thoughts.
I know this is CNN, but the source (Robert Baer) seems solid. https://youtu.be/7ZgBSYZb-gk
He says putin used information from Russian spy in the CIA to blackmail Yeltsin.
If we discovered any of them currently active, I wonder if we could deliberately feed them bits of misinformation to steer Putin one way or another?
Or maybe if the undiscovered spies could become something like ironic double agents on their own if the spies are against escalation? On their own imitative they steer things towards de-escalation? Or maybe defect at the last moment to try and stop escalation?
Careful about assigning anything a 100% probability.
Good point, thanks. I’ve edited my comment.
Lol. Somehow 1:100000000 made it more clear that it was meant as a hyperbole than 1:∞ did.
They are escalating now
I don’t think their bombing of civilian infrastructure can be considered a military escalation.
An official declaration of war and martial law in Russia would be an escalation (albeit not scary).
Nuclear weapons testing would be an escalation (slightly scary, but still very far from an actual attack).
Ordinary terrorism, by contrast, is just the default response, exactly the type of revenge for his favorite bridge that everyone expected from this particular dictator.