I admit it, I am surprised.... but also I am not.
I will note this: If their army performed so unimpressively, why do we think their nuclear forces would perform better?
Even if their nuke forces have poor QC they have quantity.
I met Richard Rhodes who wrote about the making of the atomic and nuclear bombs. He was a bit of a lefty but one thing he said surprised me. He said Curtis LeMay had the worst job of the Cold War. It was to make sure not one bomber got through to the US. Based on his experience in both Europe and Japan he knew with certainty that bombers would always get through.
“If their army performed so unimpressively, why do we think their nuclear forces would perform better?”
Even if their nuclear force performs poorly, the effect could be catastrophic.
So maybe they're not doing so bad considering the land mass they control.
Can't underestimate their nuclear ability with their pinpoint accuracy hitting targets on the east border.
I suspect that the logistic and maintenance challenges Russia is facing are echoed in thier nuclear force. However, the price of even one missile getting through is incredibly high. A multimegaton blast, even just one would make Katrina a look like a kiss from your sister.
Therefore no one is going to call thier bluff.
we’re talking about the successor state to the “premier Communist regime”, whose philosophy at one point for designing a nuke, was “we need to make a bomb so big, no matter where it lands, our target will be eliminated.”
They beat Biden to the BBB slogan. Soviets were build Bombs Bigger.
If their nuclear forces only could do 1% of what had been thought possible that is still the equivalent of what, dozens or hundreds of Hiroshimas? That which fractions of intentional harm they’d do were random hardly makes them less scary. If anything incompetent nuts with nukes (Norks, Mullahs) are scarier than wise competent folks with them (Israel.) And history has proven that their nuclear incompetence can have global effects, eg. Chernobyl, Kyshtym and many others. Allegedly including recent ones from Putin playing with new weapons in his north. And the physics governing the consequences of whatever ‘nuclear’ events happen, intentionally or errantly, are inexorably impressive.