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The Ukraine war may be entering a dangerous new phase as an embattled Russia appears to be weighing whether to escalate the conflict with limited strikes or military incursions against European NATO countries such as the Baltic states or Poland - betting that the United States wouldn’t intervene.

“I’d say escalatory risk is real, and growing - mostly because [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is under growing pressure at home and losing on the battlefield,” said former CIA director William Burns in a message to me Monday. The United States has been sharing warnings about the growing danger with European allies for the past month, officials told me.

The Ukraine war may be entering a dangerous new phase as an embattled Russia appears to be weighing whether to escalate the conflict with limited strikes or military incursions against European NATO countries such as the Baltic states or Poland – betting that the United States wouldn’t intervene.

“I’d say escalatory risk is real, and growing – mostly because [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is under growing pressure at home and losing on the battlefield,” said former CIA director William Burns in a message to me Monday. The United States has been sharing warnings about the growing danger with European allies for the past month, officials told me.

We’re watching a demonstration of how wars can leap the bounds of what strategists call “agreed battle” and become global catastrophes. With Russia caught in a meat grinder in eastern Ukraine, suffering more than 30,000 casualties a month to Kyiv’s drones, the danger is that Putin will try a breakout against the NATO alliance that he claims is his real adversary – at a moment when the United States is less engaged than at any time in the alliance’s history.

The worry about a wider war comes as NATO gathers Tuesday in Ankara, Turkey, for its annual summit. European leaders don’t know how President Donald Trump will react to recent Russian provocations. Will he stand with NATO allies and a newly powerful Ukraine to deter Putin’s threats? Or will he distance himself from the conflict? Ukraine’s supporters argue that a Trump retreat would compound global perceptions following the Iran war that the United States is a waning superpower.

The NATO meeting “is an opportunity for the Trump administration to show confidence, power and leadership,” argues William Taylor, a former........

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