He still thinks the west is scared of Russia, when the war in Ukraine has shown the post soviet bogyman to be as scary as modern day Steven Seagal (an unfit, obese senior citizen who still thinks they are a 30 year old bad ass he portrayed in movies but was always bullshit.)

All they have left is the nuke threat and that can never be acted upon.

I think it's russia's latest attempt at intimidating the USA. There'll be some nuclear related threat or accident in russia, so pootin can say "look at my crazy countrymen wanting to nuke everything! You'd better give us what we want before my crazy countrymen do something crazy!"

And the USA will ignore it, just as they've done a hundred times before with pootin's nuclear threats.