going run out of money in a couple of months at best so he will need to make a decision. At least half of its 600 billion reserves have been frozen with more yet to come. I suspect there will be a settlement as both sides are getting closer to an agreement. The West may portray Putin as unhinged but he is just a ruthless asshole that is going to try and take what he can get. Detonation of a localized nuclear bomb will cause him to lose his ace in the hole and the last significant friend he has in China. I hope anyways you never know with those duplicitous Chicoms bastards. They are already starting to hear the music from supporting him and also have a decision to make if they want to keep selling their product. If nobody is buying your shit what good is all those natural resources from Russia.

In Putin's calculus, he knows that in a nuclear conflict he and his regime are more likely to be killed than the leaders of the U.S government (us little people don't matter), and after the nuclear smoke settles America and the world will move on Moscow like it was Berlin and he would end up blowing his brains out like Hitler in a bunker if the bunker-busting bombs do not drill down to him first. His military prowess has taken a severe hit and NATO would crush him in a conventional war.

CNN just drumming up the fear. The Genie is already out of the bottle and will never go back inside with respect to nuclear weapons. The only thing you can do is adjust, which takes R&D money. Russia's GPD is less than 1/10th of the EU and 12% larger than the country of Belgium. The total military spending ratio is even worse.

In less than 5 to 7 years the US will probably have deployed some version of the Arrow 4 ABM Defense System. It is probably what scares Putin more than anything on the military front. It is a layered defense system that will shoot down all ICBMs and those feared low glider hypersonic missiles with nuclear warheads. Russia and China will, of course, do a workaround but as time passes say 10 more years the gap will widen even farther. Putin is trying to get what he can while he can. Kyiv will not fall and the catacombs of Odesa will be his army's grave.
[Post edited by jdkhokie at 03/17/2022 2:08PM]