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Despite being the perfect candidate for corrupt neglect, I don't think I've seen anyone pin their nuclear strategy arguments on the potential state of Russia's nukes. This seems like a massive strawman in that regard.
The argument for why they won't use nukes is based on an inability to construct any kind of payoff diagram for the Russian chain of command in which the nukes square looks preferable to the alternative (given mutually acknowledged tail risks).
Permitting nuclear weapons to be used coercively (i.e. folding to nuclear threats) does both in this instance. This is an iterated game.
Well I have. Perhaps that's not 'pinning' but it's very close to.
https://www.themotte.org/post/75/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/8941?context=8#context
The payoffs would be something like:
Fight conventionally, lose the war, get sent to the Hague/imprisoned or executed
Use nuclear weapons to impose favourable peace settlement with Ukraine by threatening their use to defend annexed territories (and if that fails by destroying military targets such as airfields and breaking up counterattacks). People pointed out that they're not so great at killing NBC equipped tanks but they are very good at killing infantry and soft vehicles.
The US bombed North Korea so intensively that they destroyed 80% of all buildings there. People were sleeping in holes in the ground. Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, the list goes on. I really don't see how the sole country that has used nukes coercively against civilian targets and has done similar damage with conventional weapons has any kind of credibility here.
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