Personally, I don't think that Putin will nuke Ukraine. I'm not sure the nukes work at all.
That's obviously Ukraine's call to make, but I agree 100%. If he were to use even a single so-called "tactical" nuke, the entire world with the possible exception of North Korea would be outraged, and they'd be economically and politically isolated. And that would be the one thing most likely to result in someone removing him from power. Not happening.
Putin has a
huge problem. The Russians have suffered staggering losses in equipment that their industrial base cannot replace, and the confirmation of that is the almost total lack of truly new equipment they were producing even before this war. The only way to reverse that is to shift to a true war economy, but that will only serve to foster discontent in his own country and further damage their economic base. Ukraine has suffered incredible losses too, but they're in an existential war. They lose, and they're gone. The Russians are in a war of
choice, and people generally aren't willing to sacrifice the same way.
If anyone is interested, this is an admittedly long - and very sarcastic -- video by a British war blogger who knows his stuff, and it directly concerns the Russians vaunted T-14 Armata tank. 2100 were scheduled to be in service by 2021, but literally zero are. The video really goes to a much larger problem with the Russian war industry than just the T-14, and explains why they are in a world of hurt when it comes to trying to produce modern equipment. It's got a few goofy commercials inserted, but is very informative and entertaining overall. As an aside, the cracks he makes about "putting more stuff on an old T-72 and giving it a higher number" is accurate. The different Russian tank model numbers aren't generally new models at all, but only various upgrades attached to old tanks. They haven't made a truly new tank since, well...a very long time. Hence, the "mighty" T-14 Armata.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-opSlCGLGQ4@sneakypete @Weird Tolkienish Figure -- pinging you guys because of our earlier discussion on tanks.