As of 30 November 2025, Russia has not used nuclear weapons in the Ukraine war, nor has a scenario of Russia facing an imminent, clearly decisive defeat and then choosing between defeat and nuclear escalation actually occurred. The war remains ongoing, with front lines shifting and Russia maintaining control of significant occupied territory, so the specific test condition—“rather than accept clear defeat”—has not been met.

The prediction is about Russia’s willingness to escalate up to and including nuclear use and about its supposed enduring escalatory dominance over NATO. Those are strategic-intent claims, not directly observable facts, and so far they have neither been clearly validated (e.g., via nuclear use or overt nuclear brinkmanship at the moment of clear defeat) nor clearly falsified (e.g., Russia accepting an obvious, final military defeat without serious escalation). Therefore, given the state of the war and absence of nuclear use as of late 2025, the correctness of this prediction cannot yet be determined.