Russia warns Ukraine’s ATACMS attacks mark ‘new phase’ of war, lowers threshold for using nuclear weapons

So many incredibly stupid takes in comments. This is not a game. This is not a fucking Netflix special. The escalation ladder is so easy to go up, but so hard to climb down. This is a terrifying development.

This should be delivered to Putin, How exactly should the world deal with a fanatic armed with nukes?
- You misspelled America
  I won't bother listing the countries the US has bombed invaded or overthrown governments in the last oh I dunno 100 years
- Maybe the US shouldn't have made such an obvious and stupid choice to escalate the conflict by allowing Ukraine to use their weapons?
- Your ideology has zero explanatory power in the real world. “Fanatic” means nothing now.
- Thank you for proving their point.
- lol

Bark bark bark

“Spokesperson, issue more empty threats! Surely this time they will finally take me seriously!”
- You’d think the West would have taken it seriously after Crimea was annexed. But even after losing most of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson, there are still imperial core labor aristocrat clowns like you, still failing to read the room.
Almost 25 years of that attitude from the US is how this war started in the first place[1], and now hundreds of thousands are dead or injured and millions are displaced.
- You will find that the actual cause for the dead, injured, and displaced, is that Russia invaded Ukraine.
  The simplest fix would be for the Russians to go home.
  The more permanent fix would be for the Russians to go home, and have Vladimir Putin accidentally fall out of a window very high up. That would be reasonable, given how many men he basically threw into a meat grinder.
- Every recrimination has an equal and opposite recrimination. In the end, we are where we are and every country chooses how to play their own hand by themselves.
  Russian leadership knew what they were doing when they attacked a foreign sovereign country in an act overt aggression.
  I’m sure there are plenty of rationalizations they tell themselves, but it’s not the US that “started this” in any meaningful way.
- The war started because of Russia. It's insane to state otherwise.

Nothing ever happens.

Completely unrelated question: how hard does one have to rattle a sabre before it snaps the blade?

So I commented this before, Russia spends the same amount on its nuclear arsenal as the UK, while claiming a far larger arsenal. Even accounting for differences in currency value (so cheaper labour) and assuming Russia has some magical efficiency gains in maintenance its still not enough to even come close to maintaining an arsenal that size. Nukes need the fissile material swapped out every couple of decades or they're just really expensive dirty bombs.
This puts Russia in the position where if they launch a single nuke as a warning there's a genuine chance that it might just fizzle, if that happens it would be crippling to their apperance as a nuclear armed state on the world stage, the embarassment of crossing the ultimate red line with nothing to show for it.
So i guess the answer is the sabre is pretty rusty and it might not snap when rattled but there is a chance it snaps when Putin goes in for a real stab.

~~China's~~ Russia's Final Warning

so brave
If all you had were regular warheads I'd be cheering on Americans playing chicken to their fucking grave but nuclear war would kill me too, get the fuck outta here with that.
At this point, death to America isn't a radical slogan, it's in self defense.

In a parallel universe, I would like to witness an official sarcastic response.

'U.S. eager to witness Russia's awesome destructive power in person after Oppenhiemer success. Government announces free UV glasses for safe viewing. Populace hopeful for a swift end to capitalism after nuclear winter'

Biden using his last few months to start ww3

If Russia starts nuking shit, wouldn’t Russia be starting ww3?
Or are we supposed to just accept the implication that only western countries have agency?
- Do you understand how WWI became a world war? When two countries had a conflict between them, a network of alliances caused others countries to become parties to the conflict. That's exactly what's happening here.
  The US, through NATO, was deploying lethal capabilities in Ukraine. Russia determined that this was strategically threatening its security, a position that it has held for 30 years and has been acknowledged by US leaders, diplomats, and generals, as well as world leaders and even the leaders of NATO. Russia launched a conflict with Ukraine, and Ukraine only, in order to address its security concern.
  If the USA enters the war, unprovoked by Russia, then it would be the USA starting WW3, just like in WW1 a conflict between two countries expanded to include uninvolved parties when they made themselves involved. The problem with the ATACMS is that it requires US/NATO to operate. Within the borders of Ukraine, that means that US forces are killing Russian soldiers in Ukranian territory. While problematic, Russia has only escalated its rhetoric based on this involvement. However, if US/NATO troops were to use ATACMS to strike Russian targets on Russian territory, that would be an act of war against Russia which would require a response. In this way, the US would expanding the war beyond the conflict of Ukraine and Russia to now be Ukraine, Russia, and the US - an escalation to world war.
- I doubt Russia will actually use nukes, what with MAD and all.
  Then again, people said the same thing about the invasion. Russia doesn't have a no-first-use nuclear weapons policy like the USSR did, so they could use them if they deem the country to be under existential threat.
- Behold the power of western intellect.
- The favorite weapon of the westoid, acting like the biggest imbecile in the world and claiming history starts not when they choke you, but when you break their wrist so you can breathe.
- Russia is the victim in this situation, actually. Don't you all get it? >:c

OH WE'RE SO SCAREEEED

I wish they invented a nuclear weapon that only worked on the dumb mfs who think playing chicken with nuclear weapons is so cool.
- I highly doubt Russia has any functioning nukes anyway. Even if they did, there's no way they'd use them. You keep your fearmongering elsewhere

Welp there goes my fucking sleep for tonight. I wish Washington and Langley alone would somehow disappear off the face of the earth and solve half the problems in the world overnight.

Why the fuck does the rest of the world have to risk a nuclear extinction (and a climate one, honestly) just because the US are too fucking stupid and greedy to let go of a single cent in the world.

This instance is hilarious.
Russia makes threats with nukes, because a country they attacked dares to defend itself
lemmy.ml: Why would the US do this?
The notion that Russia doesn't need to invade or make nuclear threats is completely unthinkable around these parts.
If you just analyze the 1000 most recent posts on the local worldnews, it's pretty openly a propaganda channel.
- Fuck off, Americans might not have a working memory longer than the last headline, but I remember the US proudly supporting the maidan coup with congresspeople on the ground, and I remember the US sending billions in weapons, blocking peace talks that a majority of Ukrainians want (because it wOulD bE a cOnCesSiOn) and Biden authorizing the use of NATO weaponry and guidance systems, any of which could reasonably carry a nuclear warhead. Let's not foeget the US is the only country to ever use them on people.
  I've been told for a year that the traditional military operation Russia willingly engaged in was a colossal failure and Russia was bound to fall down at the slightest wind, on other threads you stupid gringos are going"lol he won't do it let's keep poking" and then you come on other threads to pretend history starts at the reply and not the provocation.
  The rest of the world no longer buys the concern trolling from clueless (or outright malicious) gringos.
  The US has done what it's done for over a century, sabotage, start proxy wars and undermine democracy and when a country replies dumbass fucking libs will start crying about how that country is just being super aggressive for, like, just no reason 😢.
Why do you give Russia a free pass here? They are the ones threatening to use nuclear weapons. But somehow Washington is the bad guys. What a fucked up take.

Honestly I just find it laughable. 1, because there are more nuclear red lines behinds us than I care to count. And 2, if the last Russian missile test is anything to go by, I'm more worried about a giant chain reaction blowing up all of Russia.

Russia: if NOTICE ME SENPAI was a country.

I'm pretty sure they don't care about being noticed, and would rather the US and the West fuck off entirely from affairs that don't involve them.
- Every affair involves the US 🇺🇸 Isn’t there somebody you forgot to ask?