
Bullying is never fun, it’s a cruel and terrible thing to do to someone. If you are being bullied, it is not your fault. No one deserves to be bullied, ever. ~ Raini Rodriguez
Vladimir Putin is a bully, plain and simple. In the Ukraine he’s using the standard bully playbook. You know the one, the guy in the bar who with no provocation says something rude to you. If you respond the bully always is offended as if you started it, you want to go outside, you want to go, they’ll say?! Of course it’s ridiculous that they are offended, after all, they started the altercation.
Putin just perfectly exemplified this today in the Ukraine. Putin of course started the war, invading the Ukraine under the pretense that Nazis were controlling the Ukrainian government and therefore needed to be cleansed. Of course this was ridiculous, hell, the president of Ukraine is Jewish. While their may have been a Jewish Nazi at some point, President Zelensky certainly isn’t one.
As the world has seen, the Russian Army is no the juggernaut that many believed it to be. We have seen that the Russian army is not well trained, not as well armed as suspected and with no legitimate reason to fight don’t have the morale to stick out the fight. And as such we have seen the Russians pushed further and further first from Kiev, then to the East and now are even being pushed in the southern occupied region of the Crimea.
The Ukrainians have surprised the Russians at every turn. Just yesterday the bridge connecting Crimea, personally commissioned by Putin, was devastated in an explosion. Today, in response, Putin rained missiles across all of the Ukraine on residential targets in order to sew terror into the Ukrainian people. This was in response to the bridge attack, as if a country being invaded has somehow offended him by fighting back. This is the logic of the bully.
Putin is a proud bully, and right now his pride is being hurt. First, the Ukrainians pushed him out of Kiev. Then they pushed him out of the North. Recently they’ve embarrassed him in the East and the bridge was embarrassment in the South. He called for a conscription and men of draft age are fleeing the country. Some of his generals have even disagreed with him publicly in the media. It’s bad to hurt a bully’s pride.
When you hurt a bully they become desperate, some will fold up, but Putin is far too proud for that kind of dance, so what will he do? I’m going to make a prediction I hope is wrong. Vladimir Putin has said that he would be right in using nuclear weapons to defend the territorial boundaries of Russia. Of course he’s run a fake voting referendum and now claims all of these invaded territories are part of Russia. That would, in his twisted bully mind, justify him in using tactical nuclear weapons in these territories. But I don’t think that’s the direction he’ll go.

If he uses a tactical nuke he risks far too much. First, he may be spotted by NATO satellites moving the weapons that are currently in storage. Secondly, Russia would be a global pariah for using the weapon, not to mention the risk of escalation and kicking off WWIII and nuclear annihilation. Not even a prideful bully hopes for that.
I believe instead, Putin will target the nuclear plant in Zaporizhzhia. He has recently claimed it as Russian national property. I think what he will do is have the plant shelled and cause an “accidental” meltdown of the reactor so that radiation spreads across Ukraine and into the rest of Europe. He’ll start by saying the Ukrainians caused it as an act of terrorism and use that as an excuse to once again shell the country. Eventually, as evidence builds that the Russians are the cause he’ll lay it off as fake news and then if he’s pushed by NATO as an accident. Likely it will lead to more sanctions but not much else from NATO.
I really hope I’m wrong about this.