US President Joe Biden's administration is taking increasing risks to support Ukraine. The latest example is the White House's decision to allow Ukrainian forces to use US-supplied weapons to strike targets in Russia.
We may also soon see NATO military personnel on the ground in Ukraine to train fighters, TIME reports.
Six months ago, Western leaders were not prepared to discuss any of these changes – at least not in public. But recent Russian successes on the battlefield and the hardening of Western attitudes toward Vladimir Putin have begun to erase those red lines.
The Russian military recently launched an offensive on Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city is close to the Russian border, and many of the weapons used against it have been fired from inside Russia. It is impossible to defend Kharkiv without firing at targets across the border. Fears of further Russian advances this summer have Western leaders worried that Ukraine could lose the war if they do not take urgent and decisive action.
Biden also decided that most of Vladimir Putin's threats of retaliation were not credible. After repeatedly threatening NATO, Putin took very little action that would trigger a wider war. The Polish Foreign Ministry revealed that the Americans have told Putin very clearly: if you use nuclear weapons, we will destroy all your positions in Ukraine with conventional weapons.
European countries have also given the green light to Kiev to attack Russian territory with Western weapons to defend against the Russian aggressor.
Putin will not launch a frontal attack on a NATO country, but the risk of increasingly aggressive and destructive Russian cyberattacks is growing, and the Kremlin may find other ways to make life more difficult in NATO countries. There is also the obvious risk that Ukraine will use Western weapons in attacks that (accidentally or intentionally) affect Russian civilians. Or that Russian strikes on Ukraine are killing NATO instructors. Both scenarios will cause further escalation.
In short: don't be fooled by the appearance of a stalemate on the battlefield in Ukraine. There are growing dangers that could dramatically and suddenly raise the stakes in this conflict.