It's the BBC or nothing for me. I am done with the talking heads. I was up most of the night

[haele]

10. As a cold war vet myself - I'm not sure those nukes are operational.

It takes a lot of money and training to maintain ballistic missiles and operators. That's why the US decommissioned a lot of the earlier ones and you hear about people building homesteads in old, abandoned silos. And like us, the old Soviet Union's nuke program (now Russian Federation) has been under the eye of international observers and near peers for decades.
It's difficult to build new ICBM type nukes, especially with all the observation going on. Launch vehicles, maybe. Dirty suitcase bombs, definitely.

I've seen their naval fleet, most of it is still held together with 40 to 50 layers of paint, and their only carrier has been pretty much inoperable since soon after it came into commission. Tanks and planes are much easier to maintain than missile silos and ships.
I also don't think the Russian generals will allow him to do this.
Personally, I am less concerned about nukes than I am about his troops f'ing with the Chernobyl protective container and letting radiation spew all over Europe, Russia, and Western Asia.

Haele