using nukes by putin would be for him just a very elaborate suicide and this runs counter to his primary objective, sustaining political power in russia

i’d like to remind you that putin pulled shit like this three times already and three times it worked: let’s invent some sufficiently external enemy, put on them blame of all evil in the world, then invade them and propagandize this as a great victory. this is how putin got presidency in the first place (1999 bombings and second chechen war); this is how he got support of nationalists (invasion of georgia in 2008 and of ukraine in 2014). he tried it again, because people didn’t like how pandemic and economic crisis turned out, so he wanted to distract them with what he expected would be quick victory; but at this point he was so high on his own propaganda that he couldn’t predict clearly what will happen. almost a decade of preparations for exactly this scenario and (limited) western training and assistance also were a factor, of course

every day putin wakes up and can decide to withdraw but he chooses not to. that’s because withdrawal involves taking massive L and the crowd that he panders to now, the same crowd that he carefully cultivated for decades doesn’t like this, they don’t tolerate weakness. so the only way war can end, is with collapse of current russian cabinet