Just speculating: I'm fairly sure Putin knows that the West won't do any nuclear first strikes.
But if he tries anything even remotely nuclear, the West would just annihilate his empire. And the West wouldn't even need to go nuclear.
(Especially if the West got serious and opened the money floodgates. I suspect even in the current state of the Ukrainian war, if they offered any Russian defector 100k USD and a new identity under a EU passport, they could meld away the Russian army fairly quickly.)
Russia would most likely also lose the tacit support of India and China, if the bear were to use nukes first.
But if he tries anything even remotely nuclear, the West would just annihilate his empire. And the West wouldn't even need to go nuclear.
(Especially if the West got serious and opened the money floodgates. I suspect even in the current state of the Ukrainian war, if they offered any Russian defector 100k USD and a new identity under a EU passport, they could meld away the Russian army fairly quickly.)
Russia would most likely also lose the tacit support of India and China, if the bear were to use nukes first.