But what are the odds those nukes even work? From what I understand, they're complex devices that require expert maintenance. What are the odds they've been properly maintained over the disastrous past 3 decades?
It's not something I'd ever want to bet on, because even if only 10% of their nukes work, that's still plenty to do tons of damage with, but considering the sorry state of their military, I'd be quite surprised if all of their nukes still worked perfectly.
I'm surprised none have gone off, frankly.
I've been thinking about this possibility for a while:
* Putin fires tactical atomic weapon at some empty plot of Ukrainian land, and announces it as a "demonstration" of Russian might.
* The weapon is a dud.
I'm not sure whether this outcome might not be worse in the long run, in terms of geopolitical stability, than if the weapon performs as expected!
Also, I would argue about legacy. The legacy, as with many things Russian, was mostly made up. The Soviet army did a lot of atrocities during, e.g. looting and rapings in WW2 in Germany (aka the "German spring"), the pointless Afghan war that killed 1mln civilians, the suppression of democracy in Czechoslovakia and Hungary in the 1960s, the Chechen wars, etc. It has never been as glorious as Soviet propaganda described it. It's always been ugly and brutal.
PS. I highly recommend reading the long threads of Kamil Galeev [1] on Twitter. He did an excellent job explaining why Russia and its army are what they are.
[1] https://twitter.com/kamilkazani