Three ways in which war in Ukraine can escalate and attract NATO

NATO ministers have met in Brussels last week to discuss how far they must go to secure military equipment for Ukraine.

The challenge for NATO throughout this war has been how to give its ally Ukraine sufficient military support to be protected without involvement in conflict and without being found at war with Russia.

The Ukrainian government has been clear in its cry for help.

That's it. But Ukraine wants more.

It requires tanks, fighter aircraft, drones and advanced missile air defence systems to counter Russia's growing use of air strikes and long-range missiles, which are constantly reducing Ukraine's strategic fuel reserves and other essentials.

NATO strategic planners worry that once the nuclear taboo is broken, even if the damage is limited to a located target in the field of Ukrainian battle, then the risk of escalation in a catastrophic nuclear exchange between Russia and the West inevitably increases.

So how exactly could this Russian-Ukrainian war escalate into a wider pan-European conflict that drags on into NATO?

There are a series of possible scenarios that will undoubtedly invade the minds of Western defence ministries.

There are only three of them here:

1. A NATO-enhanced anti-ship rocket launched by Ukrainian forces in Odessa strikes and sinks a Russian naval ship into the Black Sea with the loss of nearly 100 sailors and dozens of marines. A number of deaths of this size in a single blow would be unprecedented, and Putin would be under pressure to respond in a form.

2. A Russian strategic missile attack aims at a military supply column passed by a NATO country, such as Poland or Slovakia, in Ukraine. If there were casualties on the NATO border side, this could potentially cause Article 5 of NATO's constitution, bringing the entire alliance into defence of the attacked country.

3. Amid fierce fighting in Donbas there is an explosion in an industrial facility resulting in the release of toxic chemical gases. While this has already happened, there is no record of death. But if it resulted in the kind of mass casualties seen in the use of toxic gas from Syria to Ghouta and if it was discovered that it was deliberately caused by Russian forces, then NATO would be obliged to respond.

It is quite possible that none of these scenarios will come true.

But while Western nations have shown a rare degree of unity in the force of their response to Russia's invasion, there are suggestions that they are simply reacting and are not thinking about what the end of the game should be.