Putin's 'nuclear plan' to win in Ukraine and damage West with terrifying new weapons

dailystar.co.uk:

Russia likely will increasingly rely on its nuclear deterrent to signal the West and project strength to its internal and external audiences".Russian ground forces are bogged down by a combination of poor tactics and devastating counterattacks by Ukrainian defenders.

Instead, Russian commanders are relying increasingly on long-range missile strikes into Ukraine in a bid to break the deadlock.But, says General Berrier, economic sanctions will increasingly threaten Russia’s “ability to produce modern precision-guided munitions,” facing Putin to adopt a different approach.General Berrier said Russia’s slow progress in Ukraine makes Putin’s boasts about “fifth-generation fighters, state-of-the-art air and coastal defence missile systems, new surface vessels and submarines, advanced tanks, modernised artillery, and improved military command and control and logistics” seem empty.“Despite greater than anticipated resistance from Ukraine and relatively high losses in the initial phases of the conflict,” General Berrier wrote, “Moscow appears determined to press forward by using more lethal capabilities until the Ukrainian government is willing to come to terms favourable to Moscow."He said that Putin’s cryptic order to put Russia’s nuclear forces on “special combat duty”, which had experts scrambling for an explanation, implied “heightened preparations designed to ensure a quick transition to higher alert status should the situation call for it.”“US efforts to undermine Russia’s goals in Ukraine, combined with its perception that the United States is a nation in decline, could prompt Russia to engage in more aggressive actions not only in Ukraine itself, but also more broadly in its perceived confrontation with the West,” he.