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Notes -
IF Russia finds itself in a shooting war with NATO (regardless of who initiates it), I consider an "escalate to deescalate" scenario plausible. Russia has (by some estimates) a 10:1 advantage over NATO in substrategic nuclear weapons in the European theater. Many of these weapons are very small, deployed from artillery pieces or even air-to-air missiles.
I would stress that tactical nuclear weapons are very, very different from strategic nuclear weapons, and during the Cold War both sides would likely have used nuclear weapons "routinely" as substrategic weapons (for instance nuclear depth charges were intended to destroy an enemy submarine, not necessarily the entire Russian Baltic Fleet, or what have you). Generally speaking, the effects of these weapons would be along the lines of "destroy an airbase" not "obliterate Berlin." However, the current gap in NATO/Russian tactical nuclear capabilities is important because it limits the ability to play tit-for-tat if Russia uses tactical nuclear weapons, either as part of an escalate-to-deescalate gambit or simply because they are effective. If you've got 10 tactical nuclear weapons for every 1 of theirs, they are going to run out of tactical nuclear weapons long before you do. So once you've both nuked each other a few times and they run out, they have two options: accept you nuking them routinely (which greatly enhances the effectiveness of your weapons systems) or escalate to strategic nuclear weapons, with the larger stakes and (literal) fallout that entails.
Now, modern nuclear weapons are smaller and often have "dial a yield" capabilities that makes the lines a bit blurrier than that, but hopefully that gives you a good idea of why people might believe Russia would resort to nuclear weapons: militarily, nuclear weapons are very effective, even if they are "small." Politically, if you have the upper hand and the deeper stockpiles, you have good reason to believe that you can extract concessions from a foe who will be unwilling to race you up the escalation ladder to tossing ICBMs at each other.
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