Putin has made threats like this before, including about two weeks ago when he announced partial military mobilization. What he's effectively done now by illegally annexing these territories is saying they're part of Russia and therefore the logic would be we will use nuclear weapons to defend our own territory. The United States is the only country in the world to use nuclear weapons twice, destroying the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Vladimir Putin keeps threatening to use smaller nuclear weapons to win his war. Author J. Peter Scoblic says “there’s no such thing as small nukes.”
This episode was produced by Miles Bryan and Amanda Lewellyn, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Paul Robert Mounsey, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram.
Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained
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