If this is for real, Putin has gone mad...
Not really. He knows President Biden would not call his bluff.
President Trump is not yet in control of the DOD.
“Let them determine some target for destruction, say in Kyiv, concentrate all their air defence and missile defence forces there, and we will strike there with Oreshnik and see what happens.
“We are ready for such an experiment, but is the other side ready?”
Putin is a mad dog killer.
If this is for real, Putin has gone mad...
Not really. Kremlin dictators wanting their opponents to think they are crazy is old school Bolshevik psywar and gaslighting. The reality is Putin is like every other billionaire and has no interest in losing his power and gravy train.
I am thinking they might agree to use an unarmed missile, to see if the U.S. could intercept it. If they fired it into the Reagan Test Range, in the Marshall Islands, the U.S. could extract some intelligence value, the Russians would get nothing. Why shoot at it? Let them do their worst, and we could gain valuable intelligence almost for free. We’ll say our missile misfired. Whatever.
Alternately, if we blasted it during midcourse, it would make them look even weaker and ineffective than they already do.
I think everyone who knows anything, knows that U.S. missile defense would not work against a saturation raid from Russia, and was never intended to. The U.S. ICBM capability is intended to thwart an attack from a rogue state like Iran or North Korea.