Summary
NATO’s Military Committee head, Admiral Rob Bauer, stated that NATO troops would likely be in Ukraine countering Russian forces if Russia lacked nuclear weapons.
Speaking at the IISS Prague Defence Summit, Bauer emphasized that Russia’s nuclear arsenal deters direct NATO involvement, contrasting Ukraine’s situation with past NATO interventions in non-nuclear states like Afghanistan.
Although NATO nations provide military aid to Ukraine, direct troop deployment has been avoided, with leaders like U.S. President Biden ruling it out due to nuclear escalation risks highlighted by Russian threats and rhetoric.
My expectation, and something I think shared by most NATO countries, is that the Russian regime would interpret western troops on the front line as a ground invasion of Russia by those countries. Something that would win over the Russian people into supporting an invasion of the bordering countries of Finland, Norway, Poland, and the Baltics.
Not to say that any no-fly-zone or a tripwire force in Ukraine would lead to Russians running into Narva, but there is still these sorts of non-nuclear escalations that western troops in “annexed” oblasts would likely cause.
Who knows where the red line is, but a lot of people in the west think it’s located before the point of troops in Donetsk.
Some game theory about red lines in the Russia-Ukraine war: https://youtu.be/tM0ZTEz7Bzc
I have bad news for you
I mean Putin’s soldiers, not Russian speakers.