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Are Russian Nukes Really as Good as We Think They Are?

Wes O'Donnell
7 min readSep 22, 2022

Knowing what we know now about the poor state of the Russian military, it’s a valid question.

The RT-2PM2 Topol-M space intercontinental ballistic missiles, cold-launched, three-stage, solid-propellant, road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles with thermonuclear warheads. © Vyacheslav Argenberg / http://www.vascoplanet.com/ CC-BY-SA 4.0

In an unofficial acknowledgement that Putin’s war of choice is not going well for Russia, Putin recently gave a rare, televised address to the Federation to announce the partial mobilization of 300,000 reserve солдатs.

His mobilization announcement did not go over well at home — 1,300 people were detained across Russia on Wednesday for participating in nationwide anti-war protests.

Some detained protesters were directly conscripted into the military!

How, precisely, Putin plans to equip, feed, and deploy 300,000 reservists remains to be seen — since he can’t even feed and equip his current army.

He also announced his intention to annex occupied areas of southern and eastern Ukraine.

Then, he appeared to threaten nuclear retaliation if Kyiv continues its efforts to reclaim its own land.

Yeah, we’ve heard this Putin line before: big, scary nukes — blah, blah, blah. Putin is no stranger to nuclear rhetoric.

But this most recent nuclear threat got me thinking…

We now know that the Russian military was never modernized. Funds meant for the military were siphoned…

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Wes O'Donnell
Wes O'Donnell

Written by Wes O'Donnell

US Army & US Air Force Veteran | Global Security Writer | Intel Forecaster | Law Student | TEDx Speaker | Pro Democracy | Pro Human | Hates Authoritarians

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