Yeah, that's the most likely, but that surge toward where battlefield nukes were in storage makes me wonder (and I'm not the only one). The threat of setting one off, making it look like it was done by the Rus and so setting off a cascade of events from the West - which includes Putin's personal elimination BTW - might have been exactly the lever he needed.

You're much closer to this than I am, particularly given your past work as an inspector (START?) so you probably have a better read than I might. I'm aware it's not like in the movies; they're not just in suitcases with a countdown timer, but I'd guess that there are at least a couple of nuke techs in Wagner as they draw from both veterans and ex-Spetsnaz and some of those latter have that training.