No, Putin Won’t Nuke Himself

He missed his window in 2022. Now, even one strike would unravel the state.

I hadn’t planned on writing this story. But one of our readers sent in a message— emotional and genuinely afraid about the nuclear question. And I couldn’t shake it off. It stayed with me for days. So here we are.

Let’s take a closer look—just one step past the headlines—and a pattern becomes clear: Every time the West debates a new weapons package for Ukraine, or Kyiv starts gaining ground, the same warning resurfaces. “Careful. If Putin starts to lose, he’ll use nukes.”

It’s not a coincidence. It’s a script.

And that script has been running for three years—played by the Kremlin and echoed faithfully by the pro-Putin MAGA contingent in the U.S. But let’s ask the obvious question: If tactical nukes were really Putin’s solution to the Ukrainian war, what exactly is he waiting for?

• He got slapped with over a million casualties.

• More than a third of the Black Sea Fleet is gone.

• A third of his tactical bombers are gone.

• His economy is on life support, and he’s up against a modern, drone savvy opponent who keeps getting more lethal by the month.

• Since January, Russia has mobilized 630,000 troops—and yet the front line hasn’t moved. Even the symbolic prize of Pokrovsk now looks at least a year away. And then there’s the cash problem.

• In May 2025 alone, thanks to collapsing oil prices and sustained EU sanctions, Russia lost $6 billion from its sovereign reserves. That’s not a theoretical concern. It’s a line item Putin’s defense minister has to whisper about in every high-level briefing.

So why not end it? Why not drop the bomb and be done with it?

Because he can’t.

Nuclear weapons cannot be used from a position of weakness.

There was a time when a nuclear strike might have forced the world to pause. That moment came early—March or April 2022. Russia still had a functioning professional army. The economy hadn’t yet buckled. Putin had close to $200 billion in sovereign reserves. The shock value would have been enormous. And maybe, just maybe, he could have survived the diplomatic and economic fallout.

Maybe.

But even then, it wasn’t guaranteed. Nuclear use would have come with massive costs, even in the early days. Now, those costs have multiplied, and Putin has nothing left to shield himself from them.

The United States and Europe have almost certainly made their red lines crystal clear to the Kremlin. Not through bluster, but through backchannels. A Russian nuclear strike will be followed immediately by a conventional retaliation that sinks the entire Black Sea Fleet and wipes out every Russian military asset inside Ukraine and Crimea.

And that, I believe, will be just the first step.

The second step will be a full diplomatic and economic severance from India, China, and Turkey. Oil and gas exports to the Global South will halt overnight. Russia’s remaining international trade will be strangled. No Asian government—not even India—will be able to justify doing business with Putin after a nuclear detonation. The public outrage will be too great. Trade will stop. Russia will be sealed off economically, diplomatically, and militarily.

And if, somehow, the MAGA-led White House tries to slow down the global response? Europe doesn’t need permission. All it has to do is enforce a naval blockade across the Gulf of Finland, the Baltic Sea, and the Black Sea. No oil. No gas. No grain. Nothing leaves Russian ports.

With barely $20 billion left in liquid reserves, Russia won’t survive a full shutdown. The blockade alone would collapse the Russian state faster than any nuclear retaliation.

What we also need to understand is the internal architecture of power inside Russia. Yes, it’s a dictatorship—but Putin doesn’t hold all the cards. His wealth isn’t even in his own name. It’s stashed across offshore accounts, real estate, and opaque holding companies, managed by his network of oligarchs. The regime isn’t one man. It’s a hierarchy: Putin, his inner circle, the oligarch class, the FSB, and the top military command.

This entire structure runs on one fuel—fear. As long as everyone in the system fears Putin more than they fear the outside world, the machine holds. But the moment that equation flips, the regime becomes brittle. A nuclear strike would shatter that balance in an instant. The fear of Putin would be replaced overnight by the fear of global retribution. His inner circle would see what’s coming: arrest warrants, frozen accounts, international manhunts, war crimes tribunals.

It’s a terrifying scenario to imagine—Europe placing a quiet call to Budanov and asking, “What do you need?” But Putin’s problems don’t begin after the order. They begin long before he gives it.

What is the single greatest fear for a dictator?

A coup.

Statistically, that’s how most authoritarian regimes end—not with assassination, not with popular revolution, but with insiders pulling the trigger. And nothing would make that more likely than the order to deploy a tactical nuke. It wouldn’t just be suicidal in foreign policy terms—it would be institutional suicide. The odds of Putin being removed before that order is ever executed are real. The odds of him being handed over to the West by his own people after the strike are even higher.

After that moment, there's no protection left. No real army. No safe capital. No generals willing to take the fall. The people barely holding the line against Ukrainian brigades today—how exactly are they going to stand their ground once a joint European response wipes out the Black Sea Fleet and takes out every Russian command node in Southern Ukraine and Crimea?

They won’t.

In fact, they’re already watching the skies.

Two days ago, a group of French and Ukrainian fighter jets conducted a joint patrol over the Black Sea—drawing a giant Trident symbol in the sky, a direct message to Moscow. French AWACS aircraft now patrol the same region, flanked by Rafale fighters.

Coincidence? Not a chance.

The Trident-shaped patrol over the Black Sea wasn’t just a symbolic gesture. It was a deliberate, coded message—loud enough for the Kremlin, subtle enough for the rest of the world. A reminder that Putin isn’t the only one capable of psychological warfare.

And here’s the part too many people miss: after the United States, the country Putin fears most is France. Think about that for a moment. Which two Western nations have seen the most aggressive far-right destabilization campaigns, disinformation warfare, and Kremlin influence operations since 2008—since the invasion of Georgia? The United States. And France.

That’s not a coincidence. That’s fear. Putin’s fear.

He fears France. Unlike Germany, France doesn’t require consensus to act. Unlike the UK, France still has strategic autonomy and nuclear credibility. Paris will make decisions unilaterally—and Putin knows it.

Nuclear weapons are most powerful when they’re not used.

The moment you actually use them, the illusion collapses. That’s the paradox. Ukraine has understood this from the beginning.

If Kyiv truly believed that Russia was prepared to use a nuclear weapon, the Ukrainian government would have moved westward. The presidential office would have relocated to Lviv. Command-and-control infrastructure would have been dispersed. But none of that happened.

Zelensky never ran. He stayed in Kyiv. So did his cabinet. So did the military leadership. So did the foreign delegations that continue to visit Ukraine’s capital. And why? Because Zelensky understood something critical: Putin might want to use nukes, but he will never be able to.

Putin loves his own life more than he loves his empire. More than he loves the war. More than he loves the idea of a “greater Russia.” That’s the weakness Ukraine has always seen. And it’s why they keep pushing.

So let’s drop the theater.

Putin will keep rattling the nuclear saber. His allies in the West will keep repeating the threat. They want you to flinch. They want you to slow down. But the truth is simpler than all the fear-mongering.

• Putin won’t use a nuke.

• Not because the West is strong.

• But because he’s scared.

And deep down, he knows that the first mushroom cloud over Ukraine will mark his end. He loves himself more than he hates Ukraine.

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