Fear is Russia's Best Defense

Russia's conventional military is weak, able to carry out only small missions without resorting to expensive (in lives) brute force attacks. Nuclear weapons are the only way to keep an invader out of Russia. So it makes sense that the Russians stoke fear in the West of Russia's large nuclear arsenal.

Riiiight:

The East-West standoff over the Ukraine crisis has brought the threat of nuclear war in Europe closer than at any time since the 1980s, a former Russian foreign minister warned on Saturday.

"The risk of confrontation with the use of nuclear weapons in Europe is higher than in the 1980s," said Igor Ivanov, Russia's foreign minister from 1998 to 2004 and now head of a Moscow-based think-tank founded by the Russian government.

I don't buy that judgment that conveniently covers up Russia's conventional military weakness.

Russia is really willing to risk Moscow for the Donbas? I don't think so.

But it is useful to Russia for people in the West to believe that Russian resolve over Ukraine is so solid that we risk nuclear war by standing in Russia's way.

I'm calling BS on that Putin front man. "Think tank," indeed.