Russia will have spent a long time gaming the options running up to a nuclear war. And, logically, it will have a series of “shock” responses designed to halt that run up, either by demonstrating its capability or its readiness.
Some of those options will be entirely secret actions which I will never hear about. So, I have no idea what cards have already been played and certainly no idea of what cards are still to be played. Thus rather than working out the individual moves, all I can do is anticipate the overall strategy and guess where we might be in the sequence leading to nuclear war.
There is no doubt that the Russians will have worked very hard to give themselves extra levers to pull in the run up to nuclear war. There is also no doubt we are close to nuclear war. And, there is no doubt that Trump is an evil arrogant fool whose self-belief in his ability to “make the deal” is as bad or even worse than the incompetence and brain-dead away with the ferries presidency of … Biden’s wife … that would have us wandering by mistake into nuclear war.
I know the Russians will have spent a lot of time and effort looking for ways to play their hand if nuclear ready Tomahawks are used. The problem is that the response of the Russians to the Tomahawks is unknown. It is either a preplanned tit-for-тат response (which can include nothing obvious), or it could be tit-for-NUCLEAR WAR. Because the option of going direct to nuclear war may be the most advantageous to Russia.