Russia's nuclear arsenal is presume to be equal in care to it's other military assets, so that makes the assumption that they can actually get a low fall out outcome as being improbable.
Dropping a nuke for demo in the Black Sea or on Ukraine will be a repudiation of wanting to be part of civilization henceforth. In economic terms, that leaves Russia with the trading partner of North Korea, and that is going to be their road to prosperity?
Does anyone think that secondary sanctions by all other than North Korea would arise from the use of a TNW by Russia in any form?
In the meantime, Ukraine is just the start of the headaches for Putin. Putin has achieved the destruction of the Russian armed forces to an extent that NATO could only have dreamed of. Their military now is inadequate to maintain a stable 'stable" of client states around their border. It is incongruous that their rapacious criminal attack on Ukraine is leading to the de-stabilizing of many of the other countries that have been held within their grip by the perception of force from Russia. Their hypocrisy in conscripting from minority states and from press-ganged victims of their invasion (that being contrary to the Geneva Convention) further weakens their legitimacy for a say in the republics beyond that achieved by force alone. The demographics, Russia is accelerating the collapse of their military and their economy by making their greatest export in metric tonnage being Russian men aged 18 to 65. Their upside down demographics was already a slow motion train wreck, but Putin just rammed the throttle wide open for that. What is interesting is what happens in the future where Russia claims hegemony based on the fact that a Russian speaker running away from Putin and his evil empire, ends up in Jamaica, and Putin pushes for another referendum to make Jamaica a Russian state, to preserve Russian speaking people.... and to defeat the [add invective description of your choice] perfidious locals.
Any nuclear release will change the history of mankind, and not in a good way for Russia. Putin will get his immortality, he will be appreciated as much as Pol Pot and Hitler.
Turkey and Greece would not sit back idly and consider a detonation in their backyard to be other than an existential threat, which is what the reason for the release is. It is an explicit threat, not by accident, and any response other than a global response to remove Russia from their current position seems to be inappropriate; invasion of a sovereign state in contravention of countless treaties and conventions, and against international laws and standards of behavior. A TNW release will unite nations against Russia, and will elicit at the very least a conventional use of force to remove Russia and their residual arms from Ukraine, "Ukraine" including Donbas and Crimea.
To not respond with a single voice is to invite the next short stature sociopath that has delusions of strategy beyond his (or her) competency.
If we have to suffer images of bare chested horse riding megalomaniacs, please can we have a woman next time as the resident sociopath?
