Despite threats to use nuclear weapons against Ukrainian targets, Vladimir Putin discovers that low-yield nuclear weapons are difficult to launch, difficult to control, and are offered more as a means of intimidation than as a weapon of war.

US officials believe that the main value of their use for the President of Russia will be the threat to make parts of Ukraine uninhabitable because of them. The Russians can fire a six-inch round from a cannon into Ukraine, or a rocket with a half-ton warhead from the Russian border into a Ukrainian military base or small town. How big will destruction and dispersion of radioactivity will depend on factors such as head size and wind direction. Even a small nuclear weapon can kill thousands of people and make the center of a city or military district a no-go area for years to come.

But there are more risks for Putin than benefits. In that case, the West could convince China and India to also stop buying Russian oil, turning Russia into a pariah in the international community.

Tactical nuclear weapons are usually less powerful than the nuclear bombs dropped by the United States in Hiroshima and to Nagasaki in 1945. In an angry speech last week, the Russian president said the bombings “set a precedent.”

The weapon that Europeans most worry about is the heavy nuclear warhead mounted on Iskander-M missiles that can reach Western European cities. But the most likely use of Russian tactical nuclear weapons would be against Ukrainian forces to avoid being hit by conventional Russian forces.

In a sense, Putin is following a script the US wrote 70 years ago when it planned to use tactical nuclear weapons to delay a Soviet advance into Germany. During his stay in Germany in 1958, future US Secretary of State Colin Powell received a 280mm nuclear cannon. Years later, he told a reporter that “it’s crazy” that the US strategy to keep Europe free was to use dozens or hundreds of nuclear weapons on European soil.