<story><title>Moskva cruiser sank while being towed in a storm – Russian Defense Ministry</title><url>https://tass.com/russia/1438045</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>oceanplexian</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t know, I&amp;#x27;m quite worried. I don&amp;#x27;t think this is as cut and try as people make it out to be.&lt;p&gt;If Russia did launch a limited tactical strike on Ukraine, let&amp;#x27;s say super low-yield, honestly not much more than the MOABs we fired off in Iraq, is the USA really going to risk Berlin, or US cities getting vaporized to defend a non-NATO country?</text></item><item><author>paxys</author><text>Unless they are also planning to nuke the rest of the planet, there is no &amp;quot;victory&amp;quot; in that scenario.</text></item><item><author>Barrera</author><text>By any measure, the war is going very badly for Russia. None of its claimed aims have been met, and the sinking adds to a long line of apparent military defeats.&lt;p&gt;This raises the question of what comes next if this kind of thing keeps happening. What does Russia do? Russia appears to have staked the farm on this operation. Can it afford anything less than total victory?&lt;p&gt;The Russian military has made a sizable investment in tactical nuclear weapons with allegedly 2,000 of them on hand [1]. These small weapons can be detonated in ways that produce minimal fallout but lots of destruction [2]:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; A tactical nuclear weapon (TNW) or non-strategic nuclear weapon is a nuclear weapon which is designed to be used on a battlefield in military situations, mostly with friendly forces in proximity and perhaps even on contested friendly territory. Generally smaller in explosive power, they are defined in contrast to strategic nuclear weapons, which are designed mostly to be targeted at the enemy interior away from the war front against military bases, cities, towns, arms industries, and other hardened or larger-area targets to damage the enemy&amp;#x27;s ability to wage war.&lt;p&gt;With every conventional defeat faced by the Russian military and with the massive loss of credibility this causes, at what point does Russia decide that it&amp;#x27;s time to take the gloves off?&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bbc.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;world-60664169&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bbc.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;world-60664169&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Tactical_nuclear_weapon&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Tactical_nuclear_weapon&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dragonwriter</author><text>&amp;gt; If Russia did launch a limited tactical strike on Ukraine, let&amp;#x27;s say super low-yield, honestly not much more than the MOABs we fired off in Iraq, is the USA really going to risk Berlin, or US cities getting vaporized to defend a non-NATO country?&lt;p&gt;The Baltics and Poland have already been pushing for NATO intervention because they want Russia checked because they don&amp;#x27;t want to be next; Article 5 is nice, but they’d rather stop Russia before it&amp;#x27;s on their land.&lt;p&gt;Nuking Ukraine, even a tiny little nuke, ratchets that up enormously and forces the US and Western European NATO powers to decide how to secure the eastern flank of the alliance.</text></comment>
<story><title>Moskva cruiser sank while being towed in a storm – Russian Defense Ministry</title><url>https://tass.com/russia/1438045</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>oceanplexian</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t know, I&amp;#x27;m quite worried. I don&amp;#x27;t think this is as cut and try as people make it out to be.&lt;p&gt;If Russia did launch a limited tactical strike on Ukraine, let&amp;#x27;s say super low-yield, honestly not much more than the MOABs we fired off in Iraq, is the USA really going to risk Berlin, or US cities getting vaporized to defend a non-NATO country?</text></item><item><author>paxys</author><text>Unless they are also planning to nuke the rest of the planet, there is no &amp;quot;victory&amp;quot; in that scenario.</text></item><item><author>Barrera</author><text>By any measure, the war is going very badly for Russia. None of its claimed aims have been met, and the sinking adds to a long line of apparent military defeats.&lt;p&gt;This raises the question of what comes next if this kind of thing keeps happening. What does Russia do? Russia appears to have staked the farm on this operation. Can it afford anything less than total victory?&lt;p&gt;The Russian military has made a sizable investment in tactical nuclear weapons with allegedly 2,000 of them on hand [1]. These small weapons can be detonated in ways that produce minimal fallout but lots of destruction [2]:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; A tactical nuclear weapon (TNW) or non-strategic nuclear weapon is a nuclear weapon which is designed to be used on a battlefield in military situations, mostly with friendly forces in proximity and perhaps even on contested friendly territory. Generally smaller in explosive power, they are defined in contrast to strategic nuclear weapons, which are designed mostly to be targeted at the enemy interior away from the war front against military bases, cities, towns, arms industries, and other hardened or larger-area targets to damage the enemy&amp;#x27;s ability to wage war.&lt;p&gt;With every conventional defeat faced by the Russian military and with the massive loss of credibility this causes, at what point does Russia decide that it&amp;#x27;s time to take the gloves off?&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bbc.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;world-60664169&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bbc.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;world-60664169&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Tactical_nuclear_weapon&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Tactical_nuclear_weapon&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>aorloff</author><text>Ukraine has also not yet attempted to hit Moscow (the city, not the ship) with missiles.&lt;p&gt;Once a nuclear bomb is used, a lot of gloves will come off, not just the Russian ones, and so far Ukraine appears to have a lot of extremely competent military partners and Russia has a reluctant Belarus.</text></comment>