The grim reality for the West is that if Vladimir Putin pushes the button, cities from London to New York could be reduced to wastelands in a matter of minutes.
The tyrant is quietly amassing an arsenal within Russia's military machine, designed not to win a war in Europe, but to obliterate entire nations with the push of a button.
Russian scientists are forging ahead with a frightening array of nuclear systems that sound more like doomsday fiction than modern military reality. They are developing a collection of super weapons intended to intimidate the world into caution, but these are not merely bombs and missiles.
They include nuclear-powered underwater drones, reactor-driven cruise missiles, hypersonic attack vehicles, and even suspected space-based capabilities that American officials warn could, in the worst-case scenario, blind satellites and plunge modern societies into darkness in seconds.
If Kremlin commanders are to be believed about their 'Poseidon' doomsday torpedo, a detonation would send a colossal wall of irradiated seawater crashing over coastal cities and naval bases in the Uk and throughout The West.
When unveiling a recent test, Putin calmly declared there are no existing interception methods and "there is nothing like this," as if announcing a new naval ship rather than a device capable of poisoning continents.