When it comes the Normandy format, I am sorry to say you are wrong. Read here (sorry, for a Gruniad link, but it was the first one I found).
So far, assuming that not all players play a bad game (like in 1914),I think the risk of a military conflict is very small. However, I see NATO risk being split, and the EU trying to take over much of the diplomatic power games on the European continent. In the long run I think this will be a disadvantage for the US and the UK, and it will create large problems for the smaller countries (EU or non-EU memebers, NATO or non-NATO menbers) on the European continent.
I take your point on the Normandy Format. However, I’m linking it to their biggest achievement, the Minsk Protocol, which was linked the the EU organization, OSCE, as described below:
“The Minsk Protocol is an agreement which sought to end war in the Donbas region of Ukraine. It was written in 2014 by the Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine, consisting of Ukraine, the Russian Federation, and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE),[1][2][3] with mediation by the leaders of France and Germany in the so-called Normandy Format.”
The trolling on here is absurd, in regard to, false statements that the US/NATO will go to war in Ukraine. The only nations’s going to war would be Russia and Ukraine.
The Russians, pose this as an existential threat, but it’s is WWII style blackmail through brute force and invasion. If you are right that they are prepared to partake of this economic punishment, it is another Putin miscalculation.
The economic punishment should not be confused with sanctions. It is systemic banking and trading consequences, and that along with denial of NS2, will be transformational in a negative way for Putin.