You have never defined "escalation"? It's time you did by specifying what specific forms of support for Ukraine against Russia's genocidal and colonizing war of conquest you'd define as non-escalatory? Are there any?
What form of Ukrainian self-defense is non-escalatory, if any? Or is surrender to genocide openly called for by Medvedev, Solovyev, Simonyan, Kadyrov and Sergeytsev Ukraine's only option? If you don't know who these people are, you're voicing opinions in context-free ignorane of a simple fact: if Ukraine stops fighting, it ceases to exist. If Russia stops fighting, the war ends. A ceasefire now would only give Russia time to prepare the next round.
So, let's get specific:
Are Javelins, supplied since 2014, non-escalatory, and HIMARS escalatory?
Are Turkish Bayraktars escalatory?
Are NLAWS shipments to Ukraine escalatory?
Are air defense systems, which are the alternative to a no-fly zone, non-escalatory or escalatory?
Are Czech and Slovak tank and IFV repair and maintenance depots escalatory?
Are Baltic states' and other ex-Warsaw Pact states' weapons shipments escalatory?
Is EU financing of Ukraine's state budget escalatory?
Was the blocking of Russia's foreign reserves in foreign central banks escalatory? Ejecting Russia from SWIFT?
Blocking tech exports (an Iskander missile is made from 85% foreign components)?
These are all yes or no questions asking you to make specific policy choices? Make them. Policymaking is about calibration, risk management and tradeoffs, not speculative, ahistorical evidence-free whining. So, stop whining and tell me what you want the US government and the EU to actually do.
I'm not in favor of escalation unless Russia uses a battlefield nuclear weapon. Absent Russian use of a nuke, I'm against a no-fly zone and giving Ukraine 300 km range HIMARS and Abrams tanks (Ukraine can't repair and maintain the Abrams in-house and doing it in Poland is impossible).
Even if a desperate Putin used a battle nuclear weapon, I'd favor only a conventional response without deploying US personnel. Just kick Russia off the UN Security Council, out of the UN, and impose full trade quarantine in coordination with India and China. Then give the Ukrainians the tools: 300 km range HIMARS, F-16s and F-35s, German Leopard tanks and they'll win and finish the war. The better the tools, the shorter the war.
The useful idiot disinformation narratives you're repeating have a long history: https://euvsdisinfo.eu/a-history-of-defamation-key-russian-narratives-on-ukrainian-sovereignty-2/#
In case you doubt that this is a genocidal neo-colonial war, watch Tim Snyder: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=tim+snyder+ukraine+neocolonial+war
His Ukrainian history course at Yale is on youtube for free. So you can go to Yale for free--no tuition, full scholarship--and learn some context. Learn why his is the only Ukrainian history course in the entire American university system, which is filled with Russian history courses. This is why you think of Ukraine as contingent, and Russia as permanent, a bias I was guilty of in 2014 when this invasion began and I didn't take it seriously.
Still doubt that this war is genocidal? Watch the Russian media that Julia Davis watches 6-8 hours/day so you don't have to. Chat show host Solovyev indulges in the same medicalization of genocide that the Nazis did, defining Ukrainians as worms:
"There'll not be the Ukraine we have known for many years," she added. "It won't be a Ukraine."
Solovyev then went on to compare Russia's actions in Ukraine to getting rid of worms from a sick cat.
"When a doctor is deworming a cat—for the doctor, it's a special operation, for the worms, it's a war, and for the cat, it's a cleansing," he said, prompting Simonyan to respond, "exactly," to laughter.
The clip of the language seemingly dehumanizing the plight of the Ukrainians was tweeted by journalist and Russia watcher Julia Davis, who wrote, "more genocidal rhetoric on Russian state TV."
"Host and pundits repeatedly assert that Ukraine no longer exists," she added.
In a follow-up tweet, Davis shared a video of an episode of another Russia-1 program, 60 Minutes, in which the host Olga Skabeyeva described Ukraine as a "non-existent" country.
