[ExoticPearTree]

Retaliate for what? They wouldn't be attacked.

That's the thing I don't understand: why would they try to nuke Moscow if they weren't the ones attacked? And would they risk their own demise (considering the imbalance in warheads between them and Russia)?

[troupo]

Yup. Because a country attacking another with nuclear weapons in its mad genocidal occupational war it started under false pretenses will definitely sit back and do nothing once it showed it can and will use nuclear weapons for any cause.