“The Russians are desperately afraid of nuclear war, and therefore WWIII.”
So the Russian believe the West will first launch on them?
The talk here is all about provoking Russia to do the launching.
The Russians aren't afraid of using nuclear weapons. Not at all. They are deathly afraid of a nuclear retaliation. If not for the possibility of nuclear escalation, Russia would be setting off nukes in Ukraine like popcorn by now. The Soviet Union spent almost 50 years being both Russian and communist, and it didn't yield to its expansionist tendency by using nuclear weapons in all that time.