I doubt there will be nukes. On account of the fact the u.s. military would get steamrolled in ukraine without them. It's why the u.s. is arming the separatists. You think biden, his circle of jewish warhawks and the shitshow running the pentagon wouldn't immediately show up, brass balls in tow, squaking for a real fight if they thought they could get away with it? Of course they would. 1. nothing to lose in terms of lives if they thought they could win 2. money to be made, if they thought they could win. And yet, here the u.s. is, arming separatists. Because the u.s. can't win in that theater, and thats not the intention anyway. The intention is to suck russia into a provocation that makes it look like russia is the aggressor. Thats pretty much the only way the u.s. will be able to justify rallying nato. The right move here is for russia to meet tit for tat and arm their own separatists. And also to fund u.s. journalists abroad to document u.s. backed insurgents and any war crimes those insurgents commit. This is still a war of perceptions on the international stage. Of course it wouldn't look like that from the Russian perspective. It would look like another life-and-death encirclement by toothless u.s. proxy, nato. And that "life-or-death" perception is what u.s. war planners are counting on to cause the russians to react first. Maybe I'm mistaken though. Maybe if the russians don't act first, the administration of the u.s, soon up to its eyeballs in a collapsing economy, and desperate for a distraction, takes it as a green light to overstep its bounds even further. Maybe the old order of u.s based internationalism sees this as moment that will decide between its hegemony in a unipolar world going forward for a little while longer (a few decades of "empty gas tank / running on fumes" diplomacy), or what finally ushers in the beginnings of a multipolar regime of competing powers.