Putin is all about distraction. He’s tentatively agreed with peace talks with Ukraine, a sign of weakness on his part. So he’s threatening nuclear war to distract from that weakness. But you never cower to someone like Putin when he’s in the process of caving. You pile on.
Putin wants the world to be so afraid he’ll nuke Ukraine, the world will back off from the pressure it’s applying to him. It’s an effort to trick us into giving up on a battle we’re clearly winning. Ukraine isn’t cowering to Putin, so neither should anyone else right now.
The cold hard reality is that if Putin is unhinged enough to use nukes, he’s going to do it no matter what we do. Which means the only way to stop him is to crush him before he can do it. It’s a sign for the world to ramp up the pressure on Putin, not back down and cower to him.
And as Col. Vindman and others have said, Putin almost certainly isn’t going to use nukes anyway. He’d be giving up and deciding to die, at a time when (in his mind) he’s still very far from losing everything.
Trump once tried to emulate Putin by threatening to use nukes. But Trump was never going to do it either. All it did was help convince Americans to get rid of Trump. Just as Putin’s nuclear threats may push Russian oligarchs to get rid of him.
And while the mounting protests by the Russian people may not be enough to oust Putin on their own, it may ultimately be enough to convince the oligarchs that Putin is no longer worth the trouble. Most Russian citizens don’t want to hear about nuclear war any more than we do.
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