But they are telling that to everyone. I'm not making a joke. Even back in April a Russian State Duma member made a radio poll if they should nuke Baku. That wa

But they are telling that to everyone. I'm not making a joke. Even back in April a Russian State Duma member made a radio poll if they should nuke Baku. That was after the first skirmishes between Azerbaijan and Armenia back then, or it may have been March. I don't remember how many but the number of people who asks for their neighbor's capital to be nuked was at least a third of the callers. So threatening to nuke somebody is completely routine for Russian government and as it seems for not insignificant parts of the angry population too. EDIT Here's an article about it: https://eurasianet.org/russian-mp-threatens-to-nuke-azerbaijan https://eurasianet.org/russian-mp-threatens-to-nuke-azerbaij... I have to add that "Delyagin’s comments were swiftly condemned by senior Russian officials" - but as I said, making the threats itself is routine even for people in government positions. At this point it's become rather meaningless to take too much notice of such frequent occurrences. Even Putin cannot help himself alluding to nukes, so it's not like you could point to certain people in particular that would be more worth listening to. In the end, does it matter? If it was possible that threatening nukes gets you whatever you want - and what Russia wants right now is really big and bad - then they could just go and do whatever afterwards. I think the only logical conclusion is that one has to ignore the threats and act as if it's only used as political and propaganda weapon. The possibility that someone will do much more has always been there, but never has it made the West back down in whatever fight it came up in, despite repeated close calls. Right now the losses of giving in would be much higher and longer lasting than in many of the previous instances. I doubt even the Cuban missile crisis was as big a deal as giving Ukraine to Russia would be. Ukraine has industry and resources in large amounts, and people, and it would be a huge boost to Russia's strength to control it all. Whether they can after hat they did is another question, but lets not underestimate the power of a brutal police state. At the very least they will spread tons and tons of misery, more and much longer than they already do, and they will have significantly more control over Europe.