This is not surprising, given as much nuclear saber-rattling as Putin has done in the last two years. He is absolutely desperate to be feared and for the West to back down, and I don’t think that’s an overstatement. Every day that goes by is a day his own empire slides back a bit, and his home control weakens as more and more Russians personally feel the bite of war coming back to them in myriad little ways.

And meanwhile, as Putin grows weaker both at home and abroad, Europe and especially his bordering countries are strengthening both alliances and arsenals, choosing NATO over Russian lies and Ukrainian freedom over the easy path of just letting him have yet another country without a fight, like Georgia and Crimea.

This war was only supposed to last three days, and we’re almost at the two-year point. If Putin could already have used nukes, even in the tiniest of “accidents,” he would have.

Yet Putin is even more aware than anyone else that nuclear saber-rattling is ALL he can do without triggering MAD and/or putting the “blast” back into “oblast” when his shit blows up without leaving the pad for want of maintenance over the last few decades.

Putting nukes into space is a great way of reinvigorating the threat behind his nuclear arsenal for the rest of the world and giving us all a bit of shock-and-awe – but without actually having to turn the key on anything he’s had laying around for the last forty years.

“Less filling, tastes great.”

But it’s still all theater. What Western satellites or resources can he actually nuke, anywhere, without triggering Article 5?