Plenty of blame to go around. Where is Gerhard Schroder these days?

Shock and awe, and a demonstration that they do infact have operational nukes, can deliver them and are prepared to use them. Brinkmanship.

Unfortunately, they have been making territorial gains this year. They pay for each metre with horrendous manpower losses, but life is cheap in Russia and they have demonstrated they are more than willing to keep this up.

Naïve take.

Almost certainly an RS-26 then, first use of an ICBM on a civilian target (whether you call that ICBM or IRBM is semantics).

And Putin hasn’t been seen in public in almost two weeks. 🤔

Ok, thanks for sharing.

Until it explodes, you don’t.

There’s still a few steps left on the escalation ladder.

Conceivably I can see them detonating a nuke somewhere over the blacksea at a high enough altitude to minimise fallout as a demonstration that they are serious and have the capability.

Video of impacts (supposedly)

https://x.com/Maks_NAFO_FELLA/status/1859531040517206497

I suspect the use of an RS-26 was meant to serve as a provocation/response to the recent ATACMs strikes.