Gilbert Doctorow, an international relations and Russian affairs expert, asked in a commentary posted on his blog on Sept. 9, “U.S. Ups the Ante: Are We Indeed Headed into WWIII and What Can Save Us?” The “ante,” he refers to is the monthly meeting of the Ukraine Defense Support Group convened on Sept. 8 by U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin at the U.S.’s Ramstein Air Base in Germany. That meeting “reshuffled the cards in the Western military and economic aid to Ukraine, and obtained contributions to the ongoing holy crusade against Russia from even more nations and adding new, even more advanced precision weapons to the mix of supplies to Kiev,” he writes. “It was an open invitation to the Kremlin to escalate in turn,” he warns, as was Secretary of State Tony Blinken’s surprise visit to Kiev the same day as the meeting in Ramstein. The “most notorious member” of Blinken’s delegation was Victoria Nuland, “who led the February 2014 coup that brought to power the Russia-hating regime that Zelenskyy now leads.”
The unanswered question, Doctorow says, is “Will Russia swallow the bait?” By this, he means, will Russia escalate to full-scale war in Ukraine. “This question featured prominently in yesterday’s major news and political talk show programs on Russian state television. I will go into more detail about these matters below,” about which he then goes into an extensive discussion.
