A Few Terrifying Facts About The Russo-Ukrainian War

As I understand it, Russia still perceives itself as a superpower in a decades-long cold war against USA. The fall of Soviet Union was a temporary setback, but now they are back in the game.

From Russian perspective, there are currently only two (or maybe three -- I have no idea how Russia perceives China) agents on this planet. Everyone else is an NPC. Some states are "NPCs owned by USA". Some states are "NPCs owned by Russia". Other NPCs are neutral and passive. But there are only two (or three, if also China) player characters who have actual agency, and everything that happens on this planet should be interpreted as a military move made by one of them. Any other interpretation means falling for someone's propaganda, hook, line, and sinker. From Russian perspective, explaining things from any other perspective makes you either a liar (which is a good thing, considering the alternative), or an idiot (if you actually believe what you say).

If you do not grok this perspective, you simply do not understand what Russians actually mean by the things they are saying, e.g. when Putin makes a speech to the Russian public. I am not commenting here on what Putin actually believes -- I have no idea about that; I am not a mind reader. I am commenting on the model of reality that his audience has; that most of his audience spent their entire lives surrounded by, so they take it as obvious, as an assumption they do not question.

If you grew up in Eastern Europe, as I did, this perspective is simply "how the pro-Russian people from the older generations see the world". If you grew up further towards the West, it probably requires an explicit explanation (and probably still remains hard to believe). Which is what I am trying to do here.

(I feel a bit weird about calling it the "Russian perspective", because some years ago, I would probably strongly argue that it is a "Soviet perspective", unrelated to any specific nation. And yet, somehow, Soviet Union is gone, but the perspective remains, as strong as ever.)

Ok, so how does this apply to current events? From Russian perspective, there is no fundamental difference between "people in Ukraine overthrow their government and decide to move towards EU and NATO" and "Russia organizes a sham referendum in occupied parts of Ukraine where people vote at gunpoint and the votes are probably not even really counted because the results are already known in advance". If you say that there is a difference, you are merely parroting American propaganda. The proper response is to say Russian propaganda, where the people of the sovereign Donetsk and Luhansk republics expressed their free will and their deepest desires; as opposed to the Maidan Revolution, which was merely a revolt staged by CIA agents.

Note that the person who is telling you this does not necessarily believe that this is a factual description of reality! From their perspective, they are merely responding to your propaganda by their propaganda, which is what internet was made for. (Yes, they are lying, but so what, you started first!) The factual reality, from Russian perspective, is that Ukraine is an NPC. Talking about what "Ukrainians want" does not correspond to anything in the territory; these are just meaningless soundbites used in propaganda. What actually happened is that Player USA moved some pieces on the chessboard, and then Player Russia moved some pieces on the chessboard. Each side insisting that the pieces "have moved themselves", which is of course patently absurd to anyone who is not an idiot, but it is a thing the players traditionally say when they are moving the pieces.

I am saying this to explain that if you talk to a person who has adopted the Russian perspective, it is utterly futile to use arguments such as "look, doesn't it just make sense that many Ukrainians have compared the quality of life in EU countries versus the quality of life in Russia (especially outside its major cities), plus they had some resentment about the Holodomor, so they decided to join the former rather than be gradually reconquered by the latter?". From their perspective, it makes about as much sense as saying "look, I did not capture your knight in the chess game we played, your knight simply decided to retire; that makes a lot of sense from the perspective of the chess knight, doesn't it?". Like, of course, people in Ukraine, or anywhere else, may have their opinions and feelings, but it is naive to assume that this might somehow translate to real-world actions. Ordinary humans are not capable of that! Only the masterminds in Kremlin and Pentagon can actually make things happen, using the ordinary people as their pawns. Even the feelings of the ordinary people are mostly a result of the propaganda they were exposed to, so we might as well disregard them and focus on the primary cause instead.

(Related LW concept: Double-Crux [? · GW]. You can't change someone's mind without addressing the underlying different assumptions first. The same statements will be interpreted differently in different perspectives.)

*

Now, to address the article directly:

Putin has a track record of escalating apparently (this needs more data) and Russia seems to be planning for escalation until the war is won.

Please correct me if I am mistaken, but as far as I know, Putin has a track record of escalating against weaker opponents. It is a weak evidence that he might escalate against a stronger opponent (I mean, it certainly is an evidence that he is not a pacifist), but it is not a strong evidence. Fighting against a stronger opponent is qualitatively quite different from fighting against a weaker opponent.

Putin has called for a ceasefire.

Strong connotational objection [LW · GW]! Russia promised not to attack Ukraine in 1994 (Budapest memorandum), then attacked anyway, then negotiated a ceasefire in 2014 (Minsk agreements), then attacked again. Considering this history, I don't see how Putin's ceasefire could mean anything other than "please give me some time to rebuild my army, then I will attack again".

In before someone points out the technicalities that Russia uses as an excuse why Budapest memorandum and Minsk agreements do not matter: yes, you have a point! And my point is that whatever agreement would be signed now, Russia would find a similar technicality in the future. Can you honestly believe they would not? (According to the Russian perspective described above, any action against Russia made by anyone is an evidence that Player USA is violating the agreement, which gives Player Russia the right to violate it, too.)

I will put it more strongly: do we have any evidence about Russia being able to live in peace with any of its neighbors, unless said neighbor is backed by the West (i.e. a NATO or EU member) or China (i.e. Mongolia)? Heck, Lukashenka is their puppet, and Putin is talking about annexing Belarus anyway.

Ukraine has "accelerated" its application to join NATO.

As far as I know, only Zelenskyy is talking about "acceleration". As far as I know, NATO is not taking new members while they are having an active military conflict. I have not heard any NATO representative say that they consider changing that rule.

Ukraine will keep attacking the annexed territories in order to take them back until Russia uses a tactical nuke out of desperation

Objection against "out of desperation". How is it desperation to lose something that you didn't own yesterday, just tried to take from someone and failed. (Yes, I am sure that Russia will spin it as desperation, but it is not.)

Conclusion:

Yes, I see a significant risk that Russia will be a sore loser and drop a nuke on Ukraine after losing the war.

(In my model, this happens for a completely different reason. In my model, which of course may be wrong, Russian strategy is simply a precommitment to make any resistance to them as costly as possible, giving their opponents an incentive to give up when attacked. Essentially: "you have two possible futures: either you lose or you win, and we will do everything we can to make sure that the latter option is more painful to you". This model explains many things that otherwise would not make much sense, for example why Russians torture and execute so many civilians right before they are going to lose some territory. It does not bring them much positive utility, but it decreases the opponent's utility from winning. Similarly, dropping a nuke on Ukraine right after Ukraine wins would not help them in current situation. But it would send a strong message to countries invaded by Russia in future to think twice about resisting: you lose even if you win!)

Problem is, I am not sure that the alternative is better. The alternative means setting a precedent that whenever Russia makes a suprise attack and organizes a sham referendum the moment they stop gaining territory, everyone must stop fighting and accept that the territory conquered so far is now a part of Russia, forever, under the threat of nuclear holocaust. Consider the incentives this creates for Russia: any attack on any of its non-NATO neighbors has a limited downside and permanent gain. -- The only strategy the neighbors can use against this is to develop their own nukes, or to join NATO as soon as possible. But Russia knows this, so it has an incentive to attack them as soon as possible.

(And then, when Russia finally runs out of non-NATO, non-China-friendly, non-nuke-owning neighbors, what happens next? Eternal peace? Or a nuclear war anyway, with Russia stronger than now?)

We got lucky once with Soviet Union -- it collapsed internally, without a nuclear war. Maybe one day we will get similarly lucky with Russian Federation, too. But if not, and if Russia never stops expanding (and so far, I think the evidence points towards Russia keeping expanding), at one moment a conflict will happen. Maybe one nuke dropped now, and then a conventional attack reducing Moscow to a pile of rubble, is the better branch. Or maybe not. Predicting future is difficult, unexpected things may happen, a superintelligent AI may make this all irrelevant soon.

Unfortunately, I do not include "Putin is an old guy, may die any moment from natural causes" to the list of unexpected things that might make the problem go away. Putin is not the problem, it is the organization (called various names, including Cheka, KGB, FSB) that created him, and will create similar Russian leaders in the future.

EDIT:

Another connotational objection: Why the big NATO logo? (Instead of e.g. Putin's face.)

Interesting summary and interpretation of a speech outlining Putin's intentions, "The End of Western Hegemony is INEVITABLE":

This is a reproduction of my live Twitter summary/translation of Vladimir Putin's speech:

I wish every single person in the West would listen to Putin's speech. Obviously, that won't happen so let me summarise as a professional translator for 10+ years. He states, as he has done from the outset, what his intentions and complaints are in the plainest terms possible.

Setting aside his brief comments on the recent "referendums", he spends most of his speech discussing the West. His primary complaint isn't NATO expansion, which gets only a cursory mention. The West is greedy and seeks to enslave and colonise other nations, like Russia.

The West uses the power of finance and technology to enforce its will on other nations. To collect what he calls the "hegemon's tax". To this end the West destabilises countries, creates terrorist enclaves and most of all seeks to deprive other countries of sovereignty.

It is this "avarice" and desire to preserve its power that is the reason for the "hybrid war" the collective West is "waging on Russia". They want us to be a "colony". They do not want us to be free, they want Russians to be a mob of soulless slaves - direct quote.

The rules-based order the West goes on about is "nonsense". Who made these rules? Who agreed to them? Russia is an ancient country and civilization and we will not play by these "rigged" rules. The West has no moral authority to challenge the referendums because it has violated the borders of other countries. Western elites are "totalitarian, despotic and apartheidistic" - direct quote. They are racist against Russia and other countries and nations. "Russophobia is racism". They discriminate by calling themselves the "civilised world".

They colonised, started the global slave trade, genocided native Americans, pillaged India and Africa, forced China to buy opium through war. We, on the other hand, are proud that we "led" the anti-colonial movement that helped countries develop to reduce poverty and inequality.

They are Russophobic (they hate us) because we didn't allow our country to be pillaged by creating a strong CENTRALISED (emphasis his) state based on Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism. They have been trying to destabilise our country since the 17th century in the Times of Trouble. Eventually, they managed to "get their hands on our riches" at the end of the 20th century. They called us friends and partners while pumping out trillions of dollars (his irony game is strong today).

We remember this. We didn't forget. The West claims to bring freedom and democracy to other countries but it's the exact opposite of the truth. The unipolar world is anti-democratic by its very nature. It is a lie. They used nuclear weapons, creating a precedent. They flattened German cities without "any military need to do so". There was no need for this except to scare us and the rest of the world. Korea, Vietnam. To this day they "occupy" Japan, South Korea and Germany and other countries while cynically calling them "allies".

The West has surveillance over the leaders of these nations who "swallow these insults like the slaves they are".

He then talks about bioweapon research (haven't heard about them for a while) and human experiments "including in Ukraine".

The US rules the world by the power of the fist. Any country which seeks to challenge Western hegemony becomes an enemy. Their neocolonialism is cloaked in lies like "containment" of Russia, China and Iran. The concept of truth has been destroyed with fakes and extreme propaganda (irony game still strong).

You cannot feed your people with printed dollars and social media. You need food and energy. But Western elites have no desire to find a solution to the food and energy crises *they* (emphasis his) created.

They solved the problems at the start of 20c with WW1 and the US established dominance of the world via the dollar as a result of WW2. In the 80s they had another crisis they solved by "plundering our country". Now they want to solve their problems by "breaking Russia".

Russia "understands its responsibility to the international community" and will "do everything to cool the heads of these neocolonials who are destined to fail".

They're crazy. I want to speak to all Russian citizens, do we want to replace mum and dad with parent 1 and 2?

They invented genders and claim you can "transition". Do we want this for our children?

We have a different vision.

They have abandoned religion and embraced Satanism - direct quote.

The world is going through a revolutionary transformation. A multipolar world offers nations freedom to develop as they wish and they make up the majority of the world.

We have many like-minded friends in Western countries. We see and appreciate their support. They are forming liberation, anti-colonial movements as we speak - direct quote. These will only grow.

We are fighting for a fair world for our country. The idea of exceptionalism is criminal and we must turn this shameful page. The breaking of the West's hegemony is INEVITABLE (emphasis his).

There is no going back. We are fighting for our "great (as in big), historic Russia". Our values are (irony game crescendo): love of our fellow man, compassion and mercy.

Truth is with us, Russia is with us.

---

That's the end of the speech. As I said from day 1, the purpose of what Putin is doing in Ukraine is to throw the West off its pedestal. This isn't about NATO or Ukraine, this is the big play to replace the current world order.

ISW has an extensive analysis https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/special-report-assessing-putin%E2%80%99s-implicit-nuclear-threats-after-annexation Here is the last paragraph:

Russian nuclear use would therefore be a massive gamble for limited gains that would not achieve Putin’s stated war aims. At best, Russian nuclear use would freeze the front lines in their current positions and enable the Kremlin to preserve its currently occupied territory in Ukraine. Russian nuclear use would not enable Russian offensives to capture the entirety of Ukraine (the Kremlin’s original objective for their February 2022 invasion). Russian military doctrine calls for the Russian Armed Forces to be able to effectively fight on a nuclear battlefield, and the “correct” doctrinal use of tactical nuclear weapons would involve tactical nuclear strikes to punch holes in Ukrainian lines, enabling Russian mechanized units to conduct an immediate attack through the targeted area and drive deep into Ukrainian rear areas.[9] The degraded, hodgepodge Russian forces currently operating in Ukraine cannot currently conduct effective offensive operations even in a non-nuclear environment. They will be flatly unable to operate on a nuclear battlefield. DNR/LNR proxy units, Wagner Group fighters, BARS reservist units, and the depleted remnants of the Russian conventional units that actually exercised fighting on a nuclear battlefield in annual exercises—not to mention newly mobilized replacements shipped to the front lines with less than a week of training—will not have the equipment, training, and morale necessary to conduct offensive operations following nuclear use. NATO is additionally likely to respond to Russian nuclear weapon use in Ukraine with conventional strikes on Russian positions there.  Russian use of multiple weapons (which would be required to achieve decisive operational effects) would only increase the likelihood and scale of a Western conventional response.

Russia gets nothing from burning bridges. They profit from selling their oil and there are a lot of plausible scenarios where it allows them leverage to negotiate the lifting of sanctions in the winter if the gas runs out in Germany. The only thing Russia could benefit from is if it weakens cooperation between the US and Germany and the rest of the EU.

One interesting aspect of Russia's response is that they are saying:

"The sanctions were not enough for the Anglo-Saxons: they moved onto sabotage," Putin said. "It is hard to believe but it is a fact that they organised the blasts on the Nord Stream international gas pipelines."

If it would be a propaganda move, I would have expected them to have a story about how the US did it prepared and not be as vague about who did it. 

When I look at the situation, I find Poland a plausible actor as well. It's interesting that Radoslaw Sikorski who's a Polish MEP thanked the US for it. The timing of Poland opening its pipeline with Norway and them imposing more sanctions on Gasprom makes them seem like a plausible actor to me. 

The United States profits from the attack as long as it doesn't damage its relationship with Germany and other EU countries. 

(Meta: writing this in separate comment to enable voting / agreement / discussion separately)

If you want to make the case for tactical nuclear deployment not happening (which I hope is the likely outcome), I want to see a model of how you see things developing differently

I'll list a few possible timelines. I don't think any of these is particularly likely, but they are plausible, and together with many other similar courses of events they account for significant chunks of probability mass.

1. Discontinuity in power in Russia.
2. Internal turmoil or collapse in Russia (e.g. regions start declaring independence). It becomes clear that nuclear weapons won't save Russia.
3. Abrupt cut in western support to Ukraine, including ammunition (e.g. due to another big war). Putin thinks he can win without nuclear weapons.
4. Russian army starts being competent. Putin thinks he can win without nuclear weapons.
5. Conflict freezes over winter, then turns into boiling-the-frog: events happening too slowly to trigger nuclear response. Over the years defeat slowly becomes an accepted fact in Russia.

I'm less concerned. Russian nuclear doctrine lists the circumstances under which Russia would launch its nukes.

a) ICBMS are launched against Russia.

b) WMDs are deployed against Russia or its allies.

c) Russia's ability to retaliate [LW · GW] with nukes is threatened.

d) Russia's state faces an existential threat.

Nothing about the Ukraine war meets any of the above criteria.

Metacomment on speculations on who might have sabotaged NordStream.

It seems like people here mostly implicitly treat possible state actors as coherent, unified agents. But maybe it wasn't any particular state acting as a whole but rather some small group within that state that decided to do it on their own. Even if they considered it likely to be identified after the fact, the subgroup may have judged the sabotage to be in the interest of the whole nation or maybe that particular subgroup.

(I don't know how much fragmentation of that sort there is in any given country but I think it's at least plausible)

I’d be willing to take a bet that the U.S. will not respond with nuclear retaliation against Russia, regardless of what Russia or any of its governmental actors do, for a 1 year period. If you believe there’s any chance.

One motive I have heard various media give for Russian sabotaging Nord Stream, is that it would be a way out of their gas-delivery contract. If they simply stopped sending gas for no reason, they would have to pay a fine. This is also why they previous claimed that Nord Stream I was broken.

In order to determine if this is a credible motive, I would need to know:

1. How big would this fine be?
2. How likely would it be they ended up paying if they had simply stopped the gas for no good reason.

I haven’t seen any media give even an order of magnitude for question 1. Does anyone know that? At the very least, I would think the fine should be bigger than the value of the released gas for this to be a realistic motive.

On Nord Stream sabotage: 

1. Looks like sabotage. Accidents very rarely look like this. (Very high confidence.)
2. Probably by state actors. It seems like a task that requires significant resources and planning. Also there was plenty of military presence in the area, it's just hard to believe that non-state actors could perform something like this unnoticed. (Medium confidence.)
3. It wasn't an ally of Germany. There is always a chance that you get caught / leave evidence, and after attacking the critical infrastructure of an ally no one will have a reason to trust you. None of the allies of Germany stand to gain anything that is anywhere near comparable to that risk (that I can think of). (High confidence.)
4. Given geographic reach, the countries that could perform something like this are probably those around the Baltic sea, plus USA, UK, France. (Medium confidence.)

That leaves us with Russia and Germany. I don't see what Germany could gain from this. I don't see what Russia could gain from this either, but then Russia has developed a habit of doing things despite having nothing to gain from them. Also, I see some reasons why Russia could think this is a good idea (implicitly threatening the West by demonstrating willingness to use grey-zone warfare against their critical infrastructure, to try to get them to back down).

So possibly Russia. (Low confidence.)

Epistemic status: proof by lack of imagination.

Nitpicks:

"U.S. airships were nearby days before."
Airships? Do you mean warships?

"Russia has conscripted 300,000 men."
Source? I've heard that they publicly said they'd do 300,000 but actually gave themselves authority to do 1.2M. Also, neither of those tells us how many they've actually got so far.


 

Yes, in updating my family on today's news I told them that P(WW3) increased in non-trivial ways today - based on mostly similar observations.

There is also a bit more to your point #2 - not only the West does not consider this annexation legitimate, but it also makes any scenario where the fighting stops with Russia maintaining control over these territories less acceptable to the West (and Ukraine), so the path to any pieceful resolution of the conflict just became that much narrower. And that in turn leaves more avenues open for things to escalate.

5b - yes, 2020 amendments to the constitution of Russian Federation included adding the following paragraph to article 67:

2.1. Российская Федерация обеспечивает защиту своего суверенитета и территориальной целостности. Действия (за исключением делимитации, демаркации, редемаркации государственной границы Российской Федерации с сопредельными государствами), направленные на отчуждение части территории Российской Федерации, а также призывы к таким действиям не допускаются.

Rough translation (I am a native Russian speaker born in Moscow leaving in US): 2.1. Russian Federation unsures the protection of its sovereignty and territorial integrity. Actions (excluding delimitation and demarcation of the national border of Russian Federation with the neighboring states) aimed at alienation of a part of the territory of Russian Federation, or appeals for such actions are prohibited.

Note the "appeals" part in the end - it would make it nearly impossible for any Russian officials to even discuss the possibility of reversing the annexations...

Kamil Kazani proposed that Putin may be planning to use nukes as a face-saving gesture (in the eyes of Russian public opinion, not yours, you don't matter to him no matter how absurd you think he's being), since it's not humiliating to lose to a retaliatory strike from powerful America, but losing to "inferior" Ukraine certainly is.

Thoughts on this?

1. Russian military doctrine allows the usage of nuclear weapons to defend Russian territory.

This is ~false. See: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/TkLk2xoeE9Hrx5Ziw/nuclear-attack-risk-implications-for-personal-decision?commentId=ukEznwTnD78wFdZip#ukEznwTnD78wFdZip

"Putin has stated he is not bluffing"
I think this is very weak evidence of anything. Would you expect him to instead say that he was bluffing?

FYI I've personally updated that I should at least be on standby for leaving the Bay Area. I've got a few days of supplies packed and and thinking through my trigger-action plans for leaving in a hurry if things seem to be escalating. It's plausible I should leave before things escalate further, but leaving is pretty expensive and I'm not sure what to do.

Thanks Dony for writing this up.

The scenarios I think are most likely (my guess of order of likelihood):

1 - Russia / Ukraine peace deal, involving Ukraine officially ceding Crimea and maybe some/all of these other annexations to Russia in exchange for an end to hostilities/maybe something else. (Russia would say no, but it would be hilarious for Ukraine to ask for the gift of an independent, Russian-made, nuclear deterrent in exchange for the territory. "In 1990's we gave up our nukes for a piece of paper you gave us guaranteeing our territory. the paper did not work, so this time you will guarantee the new boarders by giving us nuclear weapons" - LOGIC).

2 - Russia actually just "wins" the war, for some value of "wins".

3 - Ukraine "wins", retakes the territory, it turns out the nuclear stuff was a bluff.

4 - Ukraine moves into the territory, Russia uses a tactical nuclear weapon to blow up a random field with a few-dozen Ukrainian troops in it to make a point. Most of the world condemns the attack, sanctions ramp up. Then we flip straight back to (1).

5 - Some kind of political upset in Russia (either protests or whatever) results in the Russians just withdrawing.

6 - WW3. Russia uses a tactical nuke in Ukraine. Somehow (probably through several layers of escalation and opportunities to turn back) we end up at nuclear Armageddon. New Zealand inherits the Earth. PM Jacinda Ardern is declared world-queen and decides that the entire smoking ruin of the northern hemisphere can morally belong to Ukraine.

I have very low certainty on the order I have put most of the adjacent numbers. But I am reassured by the fact that in most cases I am confident that I am putting next adjacents (4-6) in the right order. I would be curious to know of any outcomes I might be missing, or if anyone has them in a radically different order.

How much difference would using tactical nuclear weapons actually make?

The mobilisation in Russia is seemingly an expensive bet. In the short term, he annoys draftees/prospective draftees, deprives the Russian economy of their labour and loses a bunch of working age men from the country. In the medium run, I think having relatives involved is more likely to push ambivalent families to an anti war position than the reverse.

So if it’s a costly bet, then what is it a costly bet on? Seemingly, it is not a bet on the prospect of using nuclear weapons to force Ukraine to negotiate on favourable terms with shock and awe - it’s possible that they assess that such a threat would be more effective if backed by a more threatening fighting force, but it doesn’t seem to me that mobilisation plays a critical role in this (compared to, say, demonstrating the resolve to employ nuclear weapons and continue doing so until the issue is settled).

Mobilisation might be a bet on a nuclear show of force failing, but it seems odd to me that they’d plan to break the nuclear taboo while assessing there’s a decent chance it fails and relying on forces raised by mobilisation if it does. This seems like a really bad plan to me, though - if a nuclear show of force fails, it’s not like the mobilisation is obviously going to work. Thus Putin would be in the position of a) maybe still losing the war, b) breaking the nuclear taboo and c) putting a decent number of Russian citizens offside. Which is to say: a nuclear show of force only seems like it’s a good idea if it has a high chance of working, and if it does then why mobilise?

Overall, mobilisation seems like evidence against the possibility of a show of force.

Finally, maybe Russia plans/decides to use nuclear weapons to support conventional army operations. It maybe makes sense that they need to maintain the conventional army to pursue this strategy (I have to admit: I know little about how battlefield nuclear weapons change the need for manpower). Under this hypothesis, Russia is at least not anticipating a strategic nuclear exchange, though they could be misguided about the consequences. Conversely, I think the higher the likelihood that Russia assigns to escalation to a strategic exchange (or simply drawing additional adversaries into the fight), the lower the chance that this possibility eventuates. The higher chance of escalation in this case suggests to me that this possibility should be lower on priors than the “show of force” option.

Finally, the mobilisation makes a lot of sense of Russian command basically expects to keep doing more of the same.

Overall, I think the mobilisation indicates that Russian strategic command still thinks nuclear escalation is unlikely. As evidence, it is maybe equivocal between “more of the same” vs “battlefield nukes”, but reduces the likelihood of “show of force/shock and awe”.

Biden threatened earlier in 2022 to block Nord Stream 2:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/biden-threatened-to-block-russias-nord-stream-2-amid-ukraine-tensions-but-what-is-it

See some (very opinionated) discussion and a bit more info here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwHH1RJxx1g

Your model assumes Russia cannot sustain a conventional war, and will have to escalate. Assume that Russia and the BRICS+ can sustain and certainly outspend the EU, if not the paper dollar just yet. As the world moves to a commodities-basket based currency, it is the US petrodollar that is in much greater danger, and historically a much greater cause for concern regarding escalation.

What's extra weird about Nordstream situation is that apparently one of the two NS-2 pipelines survived and can still be put into operation after inspection while a few months earlier (May 2022?) Gazprom announced that half of the natural gas supply earmarked for NS-2 will be redirected to domestic uses.

If Russia were to nuke Ukraine with a tactical nuke, they will put the US into a position of being forced to respond.

If we go all the way up the escalation ladder to a full nuclear exchange, it's essentially impossible for Russia to win.

So they probably will need to either not escalate, or plan to deescalate at an intermediate point, e.g. if there's an exchange of tac nukes or a tac nuke is exchanged for a nasty conventional strike, Russia may intend to stop the escalation at that point.

Russia has much more reason to bark about nukes than to bite. The bite might happen but I don't see a strong reason for it.