They fear not being able to hit back on a first strike by the West.
Russia has been attacked by the majority of their friends and neighbors. They don’t feel “safe” without MAD being in place.
If you look at history, this has been a fear of theirs for 200 plus years.
What are you defending the Russians? THEY are the ones who've done the "neighbor attacking" over the past many decades.
Very true, this mindset has prompted Russians to mistake accidents in their own military as attacks by the US military.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
They fear not being able to hit back on a first strike by the West.
Russia has been attacked by the majority of their friends and neighbors. They don’t feel “safe” without MAD being in place.
If you look at history, this has been a fear of theirs for 200 plus years.
>>>>>>>>>>
Say they are paranoid for 2000 years and counting.
Russia was attacked by foreign invaders numerous times. Every century they were losing a huge portion of their population in a wars waged on their territory.
It leaded them to specific doctrines which means expanding their territory to natural obstacles to invasions such as oceans (Arctic, Pacific) and mountains (Caucasus) and creating a buffer zones of controlled nations if it is impossible to reach natural obstacles (Cenral Europe,Mongolia, North Korea not so long ago).
Nuclear technology in 20th century was a God’s gift for them.
Having thousands of nukes as a tool to deter possible invadars is a new core of their thinking.
Every little threat real or not to their possibility of ruining every possible adversary makes their entire population extremely nervous.
That is a reason why they are opposing missile shield in Europe so much. It is a double jeopardy for them as thing both against a nukes which is their object of worshiping and also in Central Europe near their border.
It is a hit in a nerve of their national collective unconscious.