This is John Batchel, a conversation with colleague Ivana Stradner of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies about Putin's nuclear saber rattling these three years of war.

Why? What does it mean? Avana is very blunt. It means bluff. She explains here what is to be done, how to counter this bluff from Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin nuclear weapons.

More of this tonight.

Look, number one thing is to stop fearing nuclear escalation.

Second thing is to tell people that this is part of Russia's old

Soviet strategy. It's called a reflexive control. And the third thing is also to remind the Russians

inside Russia that we also have a nuclear arsenal as a mutually assured destruction.

So it's not an incentive for putting to make such threats because they're just bluffs.