

Serious question: what’s the card Russia would play to “escalate the retaliatory response” here?
- they already invaded a peaceful neighboring country - once unofficially in 2014, and then converted it to an official invasion in 2022
- they are clearly not able to exert any more conventional force on Ukraine, because they’ve been hollowing out their own military to do what they’ve accomplished so far
- they’re already (and, history note, have been for literal centuries) working to ethically cleanse and culturally genocide Ukraine
- they’ve already used chemical weapons in more than a few places
- they’re not going to use bioweapons, because that’s just gonna boomerang back into their face
- they’re not going to start using tactical nukes, because that would sure as fuck get the Bundeswehr and Wojsko Polskie and Forces armées françaises and friends to directly commit a bunch of tank divisions and air support to the conflict
- theyre not going to start using strategic nukes because that would end with (yes, a lot of other catastrophic damage, but) Russia effectively ceasing to exist
Russia’s response here is, in the realm of geopolitical calculus, essentially meaningless, and not a credible retaliatory response.
Or put another way: Russia isn’t playing any geopolitical cards as a response because it can’t.
They’re already having catastrophic demographic issues. That would only speed their fall.