They're escalating because Russia is winning at the moment. Russia just took back 175 square kilometres of territory in Kursk over the last 24 hours. That's between 1/7 to 1/6 of the total amount of territory Ukraine holds in Kursk, gone overnight. Russia has also taken over 540 square kilometres of Ukrainian territory on the Eastern front in the last month, an advance of over 18 square kilometres per day for an entire month. I think with the latest long range weapons talks potentially allowing Ukraine to use long range weapons to strike Russian territory, Russia could provide more arms to Iran in response, and more arms to the Houthis/ Ansar Allah.

If it makes you feel any better, even trump as president wouldn't stop things. Under his administration, the cia and pentagon armed the shit out of ukrainian nazis. He doesn't have the attention span or the juice to change course on this.

I have actually chilled out a bit on this. Russia is winning and this escalation isn't significant enough to change that. Russia isn't desperate at the moment, and therefore the cooler heads should easily have the upper hand against any nuke-crazy maniacs.

It's still an escalation obviously, so unless someone gives in at some point, we're all going to die. It's just that right now, I don't think the Russians have any reason to even consider going nuclear.

Discourse on the war in the West is so dire. In one corner, you have liberals salivating for the blood of Russians and openly bragging about using Ukrainians as expendable cannon fodder; in the other, you have conservatives supporting Russia because 1) anti-liberal contrarianism and 2) "based traditional values Putin."

I wouldn't say nobody gives a shit, is actively cheering on the escalation, saying that Putin will escalate regardless

You know you're cooked when fucking fascist Donald J. Trump has a better plan than Madam President Harris.

I hate that I get accused of loving Putin because he's Hitler, when in the same thread there's a German ranting about how aggression must be met with strength

It's gonna be really fucking infuriating when Russia escalates and libs act like it was completely unreasonable and unpredictable when Russia has shown more restraint against the west than anyone in the west has in decades if not centuries.

Like if Russia, Iran, and China were constantly bragging about how they were arming the Taliban and encouraging the taliban to use those weapons to carry out offensive attacks against american infrastructure, would anybody expect us to show half the restraint Russia has?

As others have said, I very much doubt that Russia will escalate to the point of nukes unless NATO gets directly involved, and even then it might not happen depending on how things go. There's simply no real motivation for Russia to do so. Putin and his government are very well aware that usage of nukes is an extremely desperate ploy and thus should only be used if they're losing, but they're not only winning, but prospects are currently the best they've been in over a year because the Donbass front is finally collapsing.

I'm not even really worried about the usage tactical nukes in Ukraine or whatever, because what would the point be? What would they achieve that conventional explosives and attrition cannot? Ukrainian forces are already dispersed because of the threat of drones and missiles; there's not some giant parking lot with 500 tanks on it to drop a nuke on. The only thing they'd be potentially useful for are a) hitting airbases to deal near-irreparable damage to them (against what Ukrainian airforce? the F-16s aren't doing very well) and b) hitting Ukrainian cities, and Russia has kept civilian casualties very low compared to Western wars, displaying that they do not share the West's utter disdain for civilian life.

if russia leaves cuck zone, but not dumb enough to use nukes, they have escalation ladder still: satellite interception, turn off ukraine electricity, bomb pipelines to uk (via unaffiliated rogue oligarch and couple of divers, as per custom), cut internet cables, provide target guidance to houthis. With nukes there is still space/infrastructure first (minimal human victims), but i feel like conventional responses fairly escalatory for the west porky already.

(the cuck zone leaving is another question entirely for a bunch of civility libs)

Even if Trump wins and wants to pull out of Ukraine he won't be allowed to. Look at what happened in Syria

Who up slicing they salami?

What's the Geneva 'we're not winning so you can't use forms of affordable warfare against us while we use chemical warfare that'll harm generations to come' suggestions about the dragon drones?

A lot of people give a shit, they're just being drowned out by CIA botting on social media and operation mockingbird-style media control.