A major air defense aid package has arrived in Ukraine to help defend its stricken energy infrastructure as the country-wide winter energy crisis deepens, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Jan. 16.
The arrival of the package, further details about which were not disclosed, came at a point when several of the surface-to-air missile systems in Ukraine were left “without missiles,” the Ukrainian president said.
Each successive delivery of extra air defense support from Ukraine’s partners is being begged and fought for, said Zelensky, who noted that Ukraine’s needs extended far beyond the well-known U.S.-built Patriot system.
I have always wondered what’s to stop them or any country from just lying and saying they have a nuke?
Making and supporting nukes takes a huge amount of expertise and equipment. Hiding those completely is difficult to impossible.
If you were going to use them as a self defence tactic, you would need to prove you also had a functioning device. Either by showing it off, or setting it off. Otherwise it would simply be seen as a bluff.
Unless you get it from another country. There have been dozens of nukes that we know about that have gone missing over the years between US and Russia.
You might be able to get your hands on an old nuke, but the maintenance to keep it able to go boom is another story. You could make a dirty bomb, but a hydrogen bomb needs maintenance every few years minimum.
I personally think this is why Russia hasn’t used a nuke. They don’t know if they will go off properly, or if maintenance got skipped and they are duds.
Espionage.
Its still a gamble. You don’t know what you don’t know, so there is always a small chance your spy is wrong. There are times when a spy is identified and they aren’t immediately removed, but instead fed false information.