Russia warns European states against hosting French nuclear bomber planes

The thing is as it happens the threat they pose will diminish. The Iran war has barely started and the US is already burning through its reserves of missiles at an unsustainable rate. Grift within US military budgets is at "Russia hold my beer" levels, Trump still plans his "Golden Dome" project, which is widely regarded as an expensive boondoggle. You wouldn't think so looking at them now, but for a minute Russia actually was considered a threat to the US. US did have the tech edge, but a lot of Russian military hardware was respected in the west. Putin systematically white-anted that out of existence, the "Sistema" Putin put in place now permeates every part of Russian society and though it's institutionalization of patronage and corruption all the way down, means nothing of merit or value gets done. This is why the latest generation of Russian ICBM has failed 5 of it's 6 tests. It's why Russian tank "Reactive Armor" turned out to be egg cartons taped together a painted to look like armor. It's why when the Ukraine war started, a lot of the invading vehicles ran out of petrol, because the soldiers sold it. Late stage authoritarianism like Russia is just rot and the US is speedrunning it faster than Putin did. This trend also means that China is pretty much a deep water navy away from being the new dominant world superpower, all while a sundowning Trump drags the country down with him. Xi should send Trump a gift basket or something.

> America is going to be exactly like that very soon. It has been like that for a year and a half, my good sir. 79 years old Trump threatens more than Kim Jong-Un. We just need to stop relaying his every word in the news.

They sacrifice themselves as well. Even if they survive the return nukes their power and control will be gone. One cannot win a nuclear war, only lose it.

Yes, well the problem with nukes is they don't care about national boundaries. If Russia uses them, they will never get to use another. It would unite enough to come in and make certain that there are none that can fire ever again. Height, payload and wind patterns would determine the worst of it and considering every country they're threatening has the ability to absolutely target them *before* they reach their targets it's much more likely that they end up killing themselves rather than those they intended to kill. This isn't to say that the nuclear fall-out wouldn't be a problem, it would but the most likely outcome is they end themselves and any chance of Russia rising again.

Don't forget Lavrov, he's another big proponent of threatening nukes.

To a culture as chauvinist as the Russian, this is probably one of the most effective ways of warding their soldiers off without spilling blood.