There will be an escalation though.
No one here has skin in the game, so they’re fine with it.
Its a war. Escalation began when the russians invaded. Any counter to any action can be called an escalation. War is not meant to be fought fairly. Ukraine took out one of two spans of a bridge. Russia missile strike and destroys an entire port facility. Was that not ‘escalation’?
Escalation is a term used like global warming, meant as a scare tactic to prevent rationale thought as to how to deal with a problem and replace it with fear.