MOVING TO FRONT FROM OCTOBER 17, SINCE THE DISCUSSION IN THE COMMENTS CONTINUES--MORE COMMENTS WELCOME
Reader Boris Dagaev calls my attention to this chilling interview at the Financial Times with Alexander Gabuev, who "before he left Russia...was a member of the country’s foreign policy elite as one of Russia’s leading experts on China," and now works for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC (previously in Moscow). An excerpt:
I think that if [Putin] believes that he’s losing this war and this war is existential for his understanding of his role in Russian history, we will see real-time preparations [for the use of nuclear weapons]. So he will try not to hide this. And it’s gonna be nuclear warhead-driven direction missile or whatever or artillery shells being unloaded. He will make it visible to give the west time to call him and start negotiation and avoid the nuclear escalation scenario, the way Cuban missile crisis was resolved....
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