I personally don’t believe Putin believes Russia has a single viable nuke remaining in it’s arsenal.
My primary evidence for this suspicion is that for all Putin’s consistent nuclear sabre rattling, he’s never done the one thing that would really rattle the sabre: conduct a nuclear weapons test. If he had a nuke to test he would have tested it just to scare off the West.
The text of the matter is that building a nuclear bomb really isn’t that difficult. A reasonably well funded university physics department anywhere in the world could probably build one. Having a nuclear weapons program is another matter. That’s orders of magnitude more difficult and more expensive. Honestly, I would be really surprised if the USA had half of the viable nuclear weapons it claims. Much less Russia.
I personally don’t believe Putin believes Russia has a single viable nuke remaining in it’s arsenal.
My primary evidence for this suspicion is that for all Putin’s consistent nuclear sabre rattling, he’s never done the one thing that would really rattle the sabre: conduct a nuclear weapons test. If he had a nuke to test he would have tested it just to scare off the West.
The text of the matter is that building a nuclear bomb really isn’t that difficult. A reasonably well funded university physics department anywhere in the world could probably build one. Having a nuclear weapons program is another matter. That’s orders of magnitude more difficult and more expensive. Honestly, I would be really surprised if the USA had half of the viable nuclear weapons it claims. Much less Russia.