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The point is that shelling the reactor was the next step in Putin's ratcheting up his nuclear rhetoric the past 10 days. He's saying "See, I'm willing to blanket the entire European continent with radioactive fallout in order to win." He just does it in such a way that he can deny he said it explicitly. I lived in Russia 15 years. I know how Russians think. This is an amoral Russian oligarch saying "I just did it but you're too cowardly to admit it even to yourself so you're not a serious person."

There's no question that Putin just implicitly and intentionally took this nuclear. He's made an unmistakeable gesture toward pushing the button.

We have to respond in kind lest he conclude we're really "not serious people" which will mean an immediate escalation of the war.

A serious man's response to this would be attacking that stalled convoy with NATO planes and if that doesn't work then sinking the entire Russian Navy.

Putin just took this thing nuclear. We must respond or we lose everything.