Hopefully stories like this
Vladimir Putin suffers huge military blow as 'unreliable' weapon 'explodes' in test
make it back to Putin, to undermine his faith in his own systems.
I like most people on this board respect what even a limited nuclear exchange would mean. If Putin has lost some faith in his armed forces in the past 2 years and things like this must make it worse. Maybe that brings us back from the brink a bit.
Unrelated, it seems odd to me that new nuclear forces would be liquid fueled. Solid fueled seem to have every advantage except the technical difficulties in manufacture and immediate short term cost.