Chest Beating and Flinging Nuclear Poo

Russia is issuing a lot of nuclear threats during this war. And that tendency predates the war. But who is hearing the threats? NATO? Or Russians?

Taking on the lead role as the loudest psychopath in Moscow, Medvedev warned that if Russia's invasion of Ukraine is defeated on the battlefield, Russia might start the chain reaction that leads to a general nuclear war. 

Ardent ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday warned NATO allies that a defeat for Russia in Ukraine could provoke a nuclear war.

"The loss of a nuclear power in a conventional war can provoke the beginning of a nuclear war," he said in a Telegram post as Western officials convene for another meeting with the Ukraine Defense Contact Group at Ramstein Air Base in Germany.

"Nuclear powers have [never] lost major conflicts on which their fate depends," the Kremlin official added.

One of the parliamentary geniuses, the leader of the lower house of their parliament, added his two cents:

If Washington and NATO countries supply Ukraine with weapons that it will use to carry out attacks on peaceful cities and attempt to capture our territories, which it threatens, we will retaliate with more powerful weapons…

Given the technological superiority of Russian weapons, foreign politicians who make such decisions need to understand that this could end in a global tragedy that would destroy their countries.

They have to destroy Russia in order to save it? 

Boy, that special military operation escalated to nuclear war threats quickly. I mean, that really got out of hand fast. 

Effing chimps with effing nukes.

Russia's fate internationally was perfectly fine--well, perfectly fine with the West, anyway--before Putin decided to start rebuilding the Soviet empire over the objections of former Soviet subjects in Europe. 

Putin has risked Russia's fate with this insane war that he purports is a necessary fight against Nazis, NATO, and Satan. Russia's worst pre-war problems were internal. The internal problems could get orders of magnitude worse.

Also, the Russians have a history of this sort of nuclear bluff. And perhaps--notwithstanding boasts of technological superiority--have incentive to be loud. 

Are Russia's people and elites content to sit in the back of the boat as Putin and his psychotic hand puppet take them on a Viking funeral ride? 

What are the Russian rulers thinking by using such Apocalyptic rhetoric?

This rhetoric should leave ordinary Russians perplexed about the future. It hints that defeat is on the cards, warns that it might be necessary to blow up the world, while promising a never-ending struggle with Nato, an alliance of states self-evidently far stronger in the aggregate, which, if it really did want to destroy Russia, would have the capacity to do so.

Putin thinks he's scaring the West into backing off from helping Ukraine fight Russia's invasion. But is Putin really scaring his own people into putting a bullet in the back of his head? And pushing the parliamentary leader out a window, to be safe?

NOTE: Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.