Answer: Technically, the Russian missile poses more of a threat to you than the US missile ever would since the US would never target an ally living next door with a nuclear missile but really they are equally deadly. Why? If you really understand MAD - Mutually Assured Destruction, then you would understand whether it is the US missile or the Russian missile once launched you are dead either way. The Russian missile would kill you directly but with the US missile the West just committed suicide.
And fundamentally the US intermediate range missile, let me stress intermediate range nuclear missile, poses more a threat to the entire planet than the Russian intercontinental missile. Why? With its range, it takes less than 15 minutes for the US missile to reach Moscow. With so little time, it would force Russians to react to any sign of a possible missile attack under extreme stress and extreme time limit. It could force the Russians to make mistakes if there is a solar flare or a malfunction with its early warning system to make them to perceive it as a US missile attack.
For that reason, after the Cuban missile crisis and finally in the 1980's the US and the Soviet Union banned intermediate range missiles. BUT in 2019, the US withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty...
Of course, the US accused Russia of violating the treaty but there is no Russian base close enough to the US to deploy any intermediate range nuclear missile. The reverse is NOT true: with NATO's east-ward expansion, there are plenty of nations such as Romania, Bulgaria or Poland to deploy such missiles. And if these missles are deployed in Ukraine, the flight time would be less than 10 minutes. Not enough time for a lot of us to take a decent dump...for crying out loud and of course the Russians are hysterical!
___________________________________________________________________________
There are at least 3 possible ways to create a buffer zone (out of Ukraine):
1. Through negotiations with both NATO and Ukraine: which failed miserably.
2. Regime change: which Putin is trying right now and his campaign may not go as planned
3. There is a 3rd option: turn Ukraine into a permanent failed state by taking large chunk of her territory, destroying her economy and periodically stirring up cross border shelling and conflicts and constantly threatening to invade again. Basically, with no hope for economic recovery and the constant threat of war no private foreign investors would ever invest in Ukraine. All Russia has to do is to keep Ukraine in such dire straits she will never meet the minimum requirement to join NATO and if all fails Russia could also threaten nuclear wars and that would be the end of that.
Ukraine is already in trouble even before the invasion and can't even pay for her gas bill (to Russia). Now with the gas no longer transitting through Ukraine and hostilities continue...how and where would Ukraine ever meet her energy needs?
