America, if it cared to, has lots of ways of making things far less pleasant for Russia. The simplistic "Do Nothing, or Launch Nukes" duality only exists in fiction, propaganda, and undergraduate philosophy courses.

Assume that no one in Putin's inner circle, nor Russia's nuclear command structure, nor Russia's badly-needed allies (China) are interested in an actual at-scale nuclear war. But they ain't stupid enough to footgun their own "nuclear sabre-rattling" options by outright saying that.

And also note that experts have had grave doubts about the reliability of Russia's nuclear arsenal for the past decade or three. Military budgets have been far, far tighter in Moscow than in Washington. Unused weapons degrade with time. And nothing could destroy Russia's "we have nukes!" cred faster than a major hardware failure when they were attempting a limited-scale proof that they are willing to use nukes.