Eh, Putin is primarily interested in taking over old USSR territory and restoring Russia to their former power. Even he isn't dumb enough to intentionally fire a bullet at a NATO member, as it would not go well in his favor. Sure, they have nukes, but a lot has changed in the last ~40 years. It isn't even certain his nukes could hit many of their critical targets before being shot down or have their guidance systems meddled with. I'm not sure he could even really rely on China backing him up, as they wouldn't see much value in going head to head with NATO. They're much more inclined towards the long term strategy that's been working quite well for them so far.
With that being said, I hope I'm not proven wrong. War is horrific and I truly wish for me and my offspring to never see the day another world war breaks out.
Even he isn't dumb enough to intentionally fire a bullet at a NATO member, as it would not go well in his favor.
Yet. That’s the problem with his behaviour and the reason why we need to see this as a lead up. He’s pushing boundaries, testing our resolve, finding cracks and stoking divisions. He’s not going to attack a NATO member yet, but sooner or later he will find the right time, the right member, to strike and expose our weakness.
It’s not wise to underestimate the enemy. We need to stop this them as soon as possible. Time only helps them. Even with their ratshit military they can still hurt a lot of innocent people.
Yeah, no. Has Russia taken a lot of fatalities? Yeah.
But they're also a huge country and a lot of what they've "lost" has to some extent areas where they'd consider the population expendable.
The thing is, while NATO etc bicker about supplying Ukraine - while fighting against internal sabotage by Russia's unspoken allies - they've been actively working on a functional war-economy and production, as well as arrangements with regimes such as Iran etc.
The West has this far been in the "send some older hardware but only for defence" mode, which is just recently, slowly turning around. Committing actual troops to war is not so much, and the militaries of many members have been grossly neglected for decades. Russia continues to push the line of "you don't want nuclear war, do you?" while also actively preparing for a larger scale conflict and pushing boundaries
They, and China, Iran etc have also been increasingly active in technological/cyber attacks. Eventually, I fully expect them to go for broke. This probably won't actually start at another invasion but rather as increasing/coordinated infrastructure attacks on infrastructure and technology.