Originally Posted by
Davef68
He's gambling that his threats are enough to make the West pause, because he thinks they will never use nuclear weapons (or at least not to defend Ukraine) - remember he thinks the West is weak and won't stand up to him directly. So his rational is if he drops a tactical nuke on a Ukrainian city, he's not going to be getting Western SSBMs inbound.
I foresee two options if he does use a nuke, the first (more likely) that he be issued with an ultimatum to vacate his forces from Ukraine and, failing that, NATO unleashes a conventional massive strike on his forces, effectively finishing them off, forcing him to concede and withdraw. The second is that (again, following an ultimatum), we nuke some strictly military target with direct connection to Ukraine, also with the same aim i.e. that he withdraw his forces.
If Russia responds with another strike then we could be looking at a wider conflict where we go after his C+C and missile forces.
Increasingly I think the likes of China is key here. Word is that they too are getting increasingly alarmed at the situation and are pushing for some sort of diplomatic resolution. As someone noted above, the fact were are spiralling into a potential catastrophe for no reason whatsoever is madness personified.