We may not be going into WW3 with Russia over Syria after all.

[Anomalocaris]

Yes, Russia's economy might be 1/10th the size of the US economy, but Russia still has a larger nuclear arsenal than the US, and can end the war by utterly destroying the US, while being destroyed itself in return, in far less time than it took for the Japanese to conduct the first of the two bombing raids against Pearl Harbor on Dec 7, 1941, or for the Germans to seize the first polish town after crossing the frontier on September 1, 1939

I wonder what would happen if Putey pushed the button?  Maintenance does not seem to be a big Russki priority.

Up to 80% of the Soviet strategic arsenal was essentially abandoned and allowed to decay into trash during the 1990s, much of it under the auspices of various armament reduction treaties.  Much of the images of dilapidation shows submarines and aircraft from that decay.

The 20% that remained nominally operation was not derelict, but was also poorly maintained and had low level of readiness in 2000.   However since about 2005, after the color revolution in Ukraine, Russia has made huge gains in not only brining the 20% remaining back up to respectably states of readiness, but also carry out a series of upgrades and modernization, including deployments of new, much more capable and fully state of the art missiles and submarines.

The 20% of the former soviet arsenal is plenty for the purpose of permanently removing the US from the ranks of top 20 economic, military and geopolitical power in the world, and I would not gamble that sufficient number of their weapons would malfunction so as to failed to achieve that outcome when called upon to try.