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Lumifer comments on February 2015 Media Thread - Less Wrong Discussion
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I think the scenario will be a wee bit different:
Russia invades Finland. Germany announces it's going to send lots of troops to Finland to fight against the Russians. Putin announces that if Germany does this he will drop an atomic bomb on Berlin. Terrified Russian elites remove Putin from power.
Even in Russia I don't think there is any political faction which thinks that a nuclear exchange is a good idea.
Unfortunately, the idea of limited nuclear exchanges or making credible or close to credible threats of such exchanges is is depressingly popular in Russian military and political discussion. See e.g. here. More generally, this is actually an old idea that of the "tactical nuclear exchange" with a few nukes being perhaps exchanged in Eastern Europe without a full-scale war. During much of the Cold War this was actually more common as a NATO idea whereas the USSR accepted that limiting nuclear exchanges was not viable and that there was no clear line between tactical and strategic exchange of nuclear weapons.
Yes, and I seen nothing particularly wrong about this idea -- it's a possibility. However I don't think the current Russian elite (with bank accounts in Switzerland, houses in the Cyprus, sending their kids to English private schools, etc. etc.) would be willing to contemplate high risk of even a limited nuclear exchange.
The wrong aspect about this is that it seems very unlikely to actually stay that restricted. And it may not at all be easy for a country to tell that another launched only a few nukes and isn't intending to use more. The standard way this sort of thing goes wrong is where the exchanges get pushed farther East and West until they are close to Moscow and Paris and then all hell more or less breaks loose.
That seems likely to be true, but how much influence do they have? And note that even with Putin's repeated mentions of nukes they haven't taken any steps to curtail the situation. A nuclear exchange if it started could start well before they had a chance to do much about it.
I don't know -- my level of uncertainty about what's going to be "likely" or "unlikely" in the event of a limited nuclear exchange is very high :-/
The question at this point will be not "influence" but "capability" -- will they be able to remove Putin and those personally loyal to him at any cost from power? I think it's "likely" but see the previous paragraph :-)
Title of a Daily Beast article "Putin Threatens Nuclear War Over Ukraine"
Headlines are written to attract eyeballs and clicks. Would you like to know one weird trick which will enhance and supercharge your understanding of European politics? X-D