We are not on the cusp of a nuclear conflagration. But Russia is escalating the war in other concrete ways.
The key to all magic tricks is distraction, which is the best way to understand Russian President Vladimir Putin’s latest round of nuclear saber rattling, including — if an as yet unverified report by Ukraine’s air force proves correct — Thursday’s first use of an intercontinental ballistic missile to hit a target in Ukraine.
ICBMs are primarily designed to carry nuclear warheads to targets thousands of miles away. This one would have carried conventional explosives for about 1000 kilometers (620 miles), from Astrakhan, at the northern tip of the Caspian Sea, to the Ukrainian city of Dnipro.