4. The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America reaffirm their commitment to seek immediate United Nations Security Council action to provide assistance to Ukraine, as a non-nuclear-weapon State party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, if Ukraine should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used.
That doesn't really answer the question, however, since "seek immediate United Nations Security Council action to provide assistance to Ukraine" is not a very strong statement.
NATO would not be directly involved (IMHO) because NATO is a mutual defense treaty and (hypothetically) no NATO country would be attacked. However, spillover from an attack into / onto a NATO country would (theoretically) draw all of NATO into the war.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_Ukraine#Bu...
That said it's only a deterrence model if you have stone cold people like the people who set up the MAD system. It might break when it is lead by hysterical people and then MAD becomes "acceptable cost".
And I make it a 0 probability event that Russia uses a nuke in Ukraine. They're winning, they're using limited warfare (ie. no mobilization in RF), NATO probably follows the nuclear deterrence calculus, and they see the Ukrainians as part of the Russian people (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-Russian_nation) based on Putin's speeches.
They haven't even captured 1 big city and they needed to regroup.
How can you even claim NATO sees them as Russians. Look at the military assistance ( now even heavy equipment)
Urban warfare is the most useless form of warfare. If anybody could learn the lessons from the Wehrmacht's disaster in Stalingrad, it would be the Russians.
Note that the West still bombs cities, which converts the ruins into hundreds of defensive positions that have to be taken slowly and with heavy casualties. The Russians tend to leave cities mostly intact and flow around them, very similar in a way to the US policy of 'island-hopping' in the Pacific during World War 2.
And it is the Russians that see Ukrainians as part of the same people.
The fact is that actually Russians do not see Ukrainians as the same people. They want that Ukrainians would see themselves as Russians but they do not think that they are equal. So neither is true.
It is also not correct when either language or culture is compared. Ukraine and Russia are much more different than Austria and Germany. At best it could be compared as Netherlands and Germany.
In fact one of the main reasons of this war is the attempt to eliminate Ukrainian nation. This has been told by Vladimir Putin also by his propagandist in writing and in TV. By this moment it is clear without doubt that main intention of this war is to commit genocide against Ukrainians.
You can read about the Russian Endlösung from here https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/kremlin-editorial-ukraine-iden...
Claim that NATO does definitely see Ukrainians as Russians, this is simply blatant lie made to confuse you and others.
Russia has massed large forces with strong superiority in armored vehicles but it is not helping them because of Ukrainians can destroy them from distance using anti-tank missiles, artillery and drones. At current stage, also long range self propelled artillery has started to arrive and also other heavy equipment.
Ukraine won battle for Kyiv and is holding its position against second wave attack from east. While Russians have managed to push to west, they do with with heavy causalities and at the current moment Ukraine is winning in the causality game by large margin.
Mariupol is problematic but it is far from taken as Russians falsely claim for propaganda reasons.
Claim that Russia does not bomb or shell cities is again blatant lie which is simply not true. Russia has damaged 90% of the buildings in Mariupol and they have engaged actively in urban warfare with heavy losses in life and equipment.
Russia has mostly also failed to do city hopping and they are blocked in vicinity of larger cities. They have not also welcomed by local population in surrounded cities they have entered. Civil protest have followed instead.
Nobody wants Russians in Ukraine. Especially not Ukrainians.
So we have here two lying pro-Russians. I do not know why they are doing it. Are they not ashamed after what has been revealed in Bucha and in rest of Northern Ukraine?
I was directly referencing Putin's speech where it seems to me he considers Ukrainians as part of the same people which would logically reduce the probability of nuclear strike. The statement I wrote had exactly zero voice of mine coloring it.
> Claim that NATO does definitely see Ukrainians as Russians
You could have simply read my second post in which I clarified that Putin sees them as part of same people (based on his speeches).
That you run into discussion, not reading the posts and claiming people are liars is insane-person behavior.
Because you made multiple wrong statements about the situation, I concluded that it is most likely that you are intentionally misleading people. You maybe also be simply misinformed but active to share your opinion regardless
Either way, it is factually wrong as I explained in my post. If you read what has been said in Russia about Ukrainians, you can see that certain people WANT Ukrainians to consider themselves Russians. But you can see also that they are extremely hostile towards people who do not consider themselves Russians.
It has been also demonstrated to be factually wrong based on extreme and extensive violence that has been committed against Ukrainians near Kyiv (and as far as is known, also in Mariupol).
Timothy Snyder, author of many history books and a holocaust researcher has written about this in his small essay "Russia's genocide handbook" https://snyder.substack.com/p/russias-genocide-handbook
I strongly recommend you to read it and linked material if your intention is to make informed arguments about this topic.
Rhetoric in Russian TV mirrors this and has become increasingly aggressive towards Ukrainians to the level of insanity.
There are reasons why I think the use of nuclear weapons is not very likely (but still probable) but Ukrainian and Russian relations are not one of them.
They tried multiple times to reach Odessa but failed and now their Black sea flagship is at the bottom of Black sea.
Something must have gone wrong with the advancement from Crimea. I have heard that there might have been betrayal on Ukrainian side and some of the bridges were not demolished to slow down Russian advancement from Crimea.
This has been bad for Mariupol because it was not possible to encircle it from both directions.
The strip between Crimea and Dnepr is very difficult to hold because when Ukraine can take Melitopol then Russian forces in Kherson risk encirclement.
Well, nobody of course can be certain about what would happen. It seems unlikely West will let it slip unanswered though.
A nuclear bomb with a 1kt or so yield kills people within a radius of about 1km with neutrons; at that radius there is some damage to buildings, but you don't die because the building collapsed. The neutrons do a good job of penetrating walls and armor so it is effective against tanks.
A B-52 can carry about 35 tons of bombs, so it would take about 30 sorties to deliver that much tonnage -- precision bombs like
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GBU-39_Small_Diameter_Bomb
get closer to their targets than the nuke does, so the number of sorties to do an equivalent amount of damage would be a lot less than 30.
You've seen the massive damage to residential districts done by cluster bomb, thermobaric and other rocket artillery. Thermobarics have at least 3x the impact of conventional explosives, so I'd imagine that it's routine for large groups of rocket artillery to do "kilotons" worth of damage.
The probability of nukes hitting Moscow, New York, Paris, and London in the next 48 hours would skyrocket.
One of the lowest-levels of escalation that Nato could take in response would be to deploy conventional assets into Ukraine, particularly fighter jets and anti-air systems. If Russia wanted to maintain a military presence in Ukraine, it would likely have to use further tactical nukes against Nato assets. Nato would have to respond in kind in order to maintain a credible deterrent. Very quickly you have a tactical nuclear exchange which can escalate (in minutes) to a strategic exchange. 15 minutes later all of the cities we know and love are gone. There's a non-negligible chance that the situation escalates to a global exchange including China, North Korea, Japan, and Australia. We can only hope that some parts of the third world are spared from which humanity can once again flourish. Even then, the nuclear winter likely kills an additional billion people due to mass crop failure and famine.
"Every operational plan in the DoD, and every other capability we have, rests on the assumption that strategic deterrence, and in particular nuclear deterrence, will hold. If strategic or nuclear deterrence fails, integrated deterrence and no other plan or capability in the DoD will work as designed. The Nation’s nuclear forces underpin integrated deterrence and enable the U.S., our Allies and partners to prevent and, if necessary, confront aggression around the globe using all instruments of national power"
Source: https://www.stratcom.mil/Portals/8/Documents/2022%20USSTRATC...
The threat of Russia's deployment of non-treaty tactical weapons on a non-NATO state has been carefully analyzed for a long time: https://sgp.fas.org/crs/nuke/RL32572.pdf
The most credible reason for Russia to commit to such a deployment of weapons is if Russia believed that the deployment would ultimately lead to a de-escalation of a conflict ("escalate to de-escalate").
At this point, the US/NATO has made clear publicly that any escalation to WMDs/strategic weapons will lead to a response in kind. A response in kind would not lead to de-escalation, and thus Russia's threat isn't really credible other than for information warfare purposes.
But of course, much of game theory rests on the assumption of common knowledge of rationality. This is why the diplomatic/intelligence establishment is so concerned with the state of Putin's rationality.
That's in the same league as shooting yourself in the foot. Sure, you can do it, but it's not worth the damage to yourself.
Threatening nuclear war if other countries don't let you rape, murder, and pillage the people of a nearby country is using nukes.
The real question is, what is the rest of the world going to do about it?
Because the US/UK/France may react if Ukraine is nuked. If Poland (or Germany/France) is nuked, the response is both nuclear and automatic.
That is, nuking Poland is like nuking Washington DC. It's a great way to make sure Moscow exists only in history books. Nuking Ukraine is far more likely not to result in a serious response.