Even Putin is not dumb enough to resort to nukes
It's not just about Putin. It is the very basics of their military planning. Definitions of the terms in their Military Doctrine. It's not classified.
Google translation:
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d) military conflict is a form of resolving interstate or intra–state contradictions with the use of military force (the concept covers all types of armed confrontation, including large-scale, regional, local wars and armed conflicts);
e) armed conflict – an armed conflict of limited scale between States (international armed conflict) or opposing parties within the territory of one State (internal armed conflict);
f) local war – a war between two or more States pursuing limited military and political goals in which military operations are conducted within the borders of the opposing States and which primarily affects the interests of only these States (territorial, economic, political and others);
g) regional war – a war involving two or more States of the same region, waged by national or coalition armed forces using both conventional and nuclear weapons in the territory of the region with adjacent waters and in the airspace (outer space) above it, during which the parties will pursue important military and political objectives. goals;
h) a large–scale war is a war between coalitions of states or the largest states of the world community, in which the parties will pursue radical military and political goals. A large-scale war can result from an escalation of an armed conflict, a local or regional war involving a significant number of States from different regions of the world. It will require the mobilization of all available material resources and spiritual forces of the participating States;
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So, if you say "regional war", it, by definition, means that Russia will use nukes. If you say "large-scale war" (say, the war with participating of both European and North American states) it means, that the Russians will use everything.
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