I really hope you are right. The question is how far they are willing to go, and how many civilians they are willing to sacrifice. The Russian economy is well in the toilet by now, they won't be able to replace equipment losses like tanks and missiles. Poverty rates and unemployment will also skyrocket as more and more companies leave Russia. It will take them years and years to recover.
That opens up for a pretty scary scenario where Putin figures there is nothing left to lose and escalates into a tac-nuke on Kiev just to shut Zelenskyy up.
Considering his inner circle i doubt anyone there will have the strength to stop him if he would decide to cross that final rubicon. Accepting a humiliating defeat and/or a decade or so of economic stagnation and crippling sanctions could be impossible for him to swallow.
The best case scenario, at least from the non-russian side would be an utter defeat for Russia, 1945 rather than 1918. Revanchism from the defeat would be huge and they still have a ton of nukes. Rather not see someone even more unstable than Putin in charge of that arsenal
Any use of a nuclear weapon by Russia will prompt a full annihilation of it.
This has been communicated to them in the strongest terms possible (it is not talked about that much though).
Putin knows that and he has already gambled enough and lost.
He may salvage something (for his people and his persona) out of "holding" the corridor created between donbass and crimea.
That is infact what I first though would be the limit of objective if Russia went for war to begin with.
Here are my earlier pre war posts:
april 2021:
defencehub.live
december 2021:
I think if the Russians had the capacity they would have invaded Ukraine by now. I was actually shocked by the fact the Russians have mobilized about a 1/4 of its armed forces and it just about outnumbers 1/2 the Ukraine army. In the old days the Russians could have mobilized ten times this...
defencehub.live
as I sensed that is all Russia really was capable of logistically and financially (if it went for a war gamble in first place)
They stupidly went all out on Kiev etc as well, in a full "all in" that they were totally ill-prepared to see out past a week or two (if Ukraine stayed firm and went to work on methodically severing and liquidating russian invasion forces getting stuck there just like what ended up happening).
Given all this I very much doubt they will do anything more than saber rattle regarding their nukes.
NATO intel assets are keeping tabs on the moscow warhead authority (the name escapes me)....the NFZ "status quo" will be broken by NATO if they see indication of any decision + evidence to mate those with say iskanders.
Just like NATO has various analysis and resources it has regarding the state, presence and threat value of the delta SSBNs.
Russia most definitely does not want to charge into that precipice at all.
They (USSR) were lucky to escape the last one in Cuban missile crisis given what LeMay was pressuring Kennedy to do.
"Sooner or later we will have to fight these people, and we might as well do it now when we enjoy 10:1 strategic superiority".