The missing side of this is that at some point, Russia is taking the bet that NATO blowing those tanks up is not worth escalating to the apocalypse over.
There's a very reasonable argument that NATO could tomorrow announce they're intervening in Ukraine to protect it's sovereignty, operations will be limited to Ukranian territory, and that any attempt to strike out will be met "unescapable retaliation"...and maybe NATO and Russia then have a shooting conventional war in the Ukraine and it stays there.
The reason everyone's trying to avoid that is because the tick-tock of escalation depends on the other side correctly reading the situation and the fog of war. NATO countries are activating units on their borders right now near Ukraine because there's a very real risk of a Russian platoon will get lost, invade a town which is actually in a NATO country, and then you've got to deal with that - and it's probably better the question not get asked because once the shooting starts it's very hard to get it to stop (i.e. suppose our out of position Russian unit calls in artillery, so NATO drops air strikes on the position inside Ukraine, so now the news going up the chain on both sides is "the other side is coming across the border!")
There's a very reasonable argument that NATO could tomorrow announce they're intervening in Ukraine to protect it's sovereignty, operations will be limited to Ukranian territory, and that any attempt to strike out will be met "unescapable retaliation"...and maybe NATO and Russia then have a shooting conventional war in the Ukraine and it stays there.
The reason everyone's trying to avoid that is because the tick-tock of escalation depends on the other side correctly reading the situation and the fog of war. NATO countries are activating units on their borders right now near Ukraine because there's a very real risk of a Russian platoon will get lost, invade a town which is actually in a NATO country, and then you've got to deal with that - and it's probably better the question not get asked because once the shooting starts it's very hard to get it to stop (i.e. suppose our out of position Russian unit calls in artillery, so NATO drops air strikes on the position inside Ukraine, so now the news going up the chain on both sides is "the other side is coming across the border!")