Putin's Nukes ... and Appeasement

Concerning the fear-mongering and spirit of appeasement toward Putin based on Russia's nuclear stockpile and Putin's continuing threats to use them --

Why do you imagine/assume that Russia is capable of nuking *anyone*? Considering the atrocious maintenance of their conventional arms, does it really make rational sense that they did any better with the more expensive and more technical maintenance required for the nukes?

Assume that the Russian military have somehow managed to maintain 3/4 of their nukes in operational order. That's still a lot of nukes ... and thus really scary, right?

Well, maybe. WHICH 3/4 are operational? Unless the decision to let 1/4 become dudes was intentional, the Russian generals have no idea which ones are not dudes.

But, which is more likely -- that the Russian government intentionally scaled down maintenance to a select minority of the USSR's nukes, or that the Russian government *assumed* that the resources allocated to maintaining the entire stockpile were thus spent without corrupt "diversions" into the bank accounts of high-level officials?  That is, how likely is it that the corruption rampant in their conventional military is not also rampant on the nuclear side?

Now, we shouldn't be caviler about Putin's threats to use nukes, but neither should we cower or appease.