Here is a very interesting recent YouTube video by Peter Zeihan, with his analysis regarding the decades long deterioration of Russian society (finally resulting in Putin), and that the war on Ukraine has accelerated Russia towards it’s coming national fall.
In short, it paradoxically indicates that as Russian armed forces become weaker as a result of the war, and domestic Russia as a result of social corruption, the more likely it may become that they feel they must deploy nuclear weapons against NATO out of a fear of their own conventional force weakness. Which has become manifest in Ukraine.