During the cold war, Russia never wanted to have mutual inspections of nukes. After the war ended the world discovered that the Soviets were generations behind in technology. The recent invasion of Ukraine shows the Russia army is sorely lacking. What kind of condition are the Russian nukes in. Are they in a position to challenge the US in an all out war. With the nuke submarines floating around the world a first strike does not assure victory. The US has 24 subs that can carry nukes and each can carry 24 missiles and each missile carries 5 hydrogen bombs and each bomb is 1.5 megatons which is 75 times the size of the bomb dropped on Japan in WW 2. Each bomb is designed to hit a specific city. This is the equivalent of 4.4 billion tons of explosives and that is enough to destroy 220,000 cities the size of Hiroshima. What it boils down to is that even with a first strike you will still lose. None of this includes the ground based nukes that the US has or all of the nukes other countries could employ. This is why the cold war phrase of mutually assured destruction meant what it said and kept the world at peace. Could Putin be willing to end the world to save face? We can risk it or find a way to let him save face or let him keep doing what ever he wants. It appears that the mutually assured destruction policy that kept the world safe is now being used to expand power by using the threat of world destruction.