Will Vladimir Putin push the nuclear button? For now, analysts are cautiously suggesting that the risk of this is relatively low. The CIA estimates that there are no signs of a Russian nuclear attack anytime soon.

However, Putin's announcements that he will "use all measures" to defend Russia as it wages war in Ukraine are being taken very seriously. His statement on Friday that the US "set a precedent" with the use of the atomic bomb in World War II further raised the nuclear stakes.

The White House has warned of "catastrophic consequences for Russia" if Putin uses nuclear weapons. But whether Putin will really do that, no one can judge. Nervous observers admit they are not sure how he thinks, or whether he is rational and well-informed.

"We currently see no practical evidence that it is approaching the use, or that there is an imminent threat, of the use of tactical nuclear weapons," CIA Director William Burns said.

"We have to take it very seriously, we're watching for signals of possible preparation," Barnes said.

Rescue from defeat for Russia?

Kremlin insiders are confused, in part, because they do not see how the use of nuclear weapons will help Russia save itself from military defeats in Ukraine. Ukrainian troops do not use a large concentration of tanks during conquests, and battles are mostly fought for very small villages and settlements. What would Russia achieve with nuclear weapons?

"Nuclear weapons are not a magic cloth," says Andrei Baklitsky, a researcher at the UN's Disarmament Institute.

"It's not something you're going to use and it's going to solve all your problems."

Analysts hope that the taboo around nuclear weapons will also serve as a deterrent. No country except the United States used nuclear weapons on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II. Analysts believe that it would be too much even for Putin to become the first world leader to take such a step and thus become a world renegade.

"Breaking the nuclear taboo would impose, at the very least, complete diplomatic and economic isolation on Russia," said Siddharth Kaushal, a researcher at the Royal Institute of London.

Analysts cannot even identify military objectives that would be worth the heavy price that Putin will pay. If one nuclear attack does not stop the progress of the Ukrainians, will more and more follow?

Putin is tearing down the bridges behind him

Pavel Podvig, a nuclear weapons analyst at the UN center in Geneva, states that in this war there are no "large concentrations of troops" that could be attacked. Attacking cities in the hope that Ukraine would surrender would be a terrible alternative.

"The decision to kill tens or hundreds of thousands of people in cold blood is very difficult. And that's how it should be," says Podvig.

Vladimir Putin may be hoping that the threat alone will be enough to slow Western arms shipments to Ukraine and buy him time to train the extra 300.000 troops being mobilized for war.

But if Ukraine continues to advance and Putin faces defeat, analysts fear the risk will grow that he will realize that non-nuclear options are thin.

"Putin is destroying the bridges behind him with the mobilization and the annexation of new territories," said Dara Massikot, a researcher at the RAND Corporation and a former analyst of Russian military capabilities at the US Department of Defense.

"It shows that he wants to win on his own terms. I am very concerned that this could eventually lead to the use of the nuclear option."

The text is taken from Deutsche Welle.

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