I really wonder what the state of Russia's nuclear arsenal is like then? Better or worse? Maybe that still have a lot of the old Nuclear power stations running to better supply the materials to maintain their warheads ?
Extrapolating from the general sad state of the weapon systems in use by Russians where they are at this point unpacking tanks made in 1950, the quality of maintenance on their vehicles, and is difficult to plausibly claim that all the ancient rusty USSR stuff across the strategic rocket barrier is in any sort of usable shape.
Now, if an order to launch is given, some rockets may launch, some of those may actually fly, some of those flying actually get somewhere, and perhaps some of THOSE may actually detonate should they reach the target, and maybe if you're lucky at the designed yield. The percentages in that funnel that aren't known. And nobody [perhaps except some crazies] wants to find them out because even one in the middle of big city is enough.
There is no more ancient rusty USSR stuff -- at least in the Kremlin's strategic nuclear arsenal:
According to one comment I saw here a few weeks ago, Russia's nukes are probably made of wood.
I suggest searching the web for "Russian nuclear weapons modernization", restricting yourself to credible news outlets.
Opinions are fine, but the evidence against your opinion is currently stronger.
https://carnegieendowment.org/russia-eurasia/politika/2024/0...
I think you're likely wrong about that last part. I would be willing to bet that certain US 3-letter agencies know very well what the percentages in that funnel are. It's clearly enough that the west is careful about direct confrontation with Russia.
Some choice quotes: "Vladimir Putin has the old politburo to thank for the huge stockpiles of weapons that were built up during the cold war"
"Russia’s ability to build new tanks or infantry fighting vehicles, or even to refurbish old ones, is hampered by the difficulty of getting components. <...> The lack of high-quality ball-bearings is also a constraint."
"They [military firms] also largely depend on machine tools imported years ago from Germany and Sweden, many of which are now old and hard to maintain."
Given that the country has no ability to produce ball bearings - and in other news, even nails, and can only cast gun barrels in single digits on western equipment, consider me HIGHLY skeptical that any rocket modernization that was supposed to have transpired has gleaming ready to fly stuff. More likely the money was "razpil" (разпилено) - literally "sawn off".
Still, lets hope we don't have to find out
Does it matter?
The thing about a nuclear *deterrent* is that it doesn't have to work. There just has to be a realistic possibility that (at least some of it) it might.