Nato has refused to intervene militarily in the Ukraine war. Dan Sabbagh explains what more the world’s most powerful military alliance could do – and why full intervention is off the table for now
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When the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, addressed the UK parliament this week via video link from his bunker, he had one overriding message: we need more help to fight off Russia’s attacks and specifically we need a no-fly zone. But as the Guardian’s defence and security editor, Dan Sabbagh, tells Michael Safi, a no-fly zone is not happening. To do so would mean Nato forces directly engaging Russian aircraft and would risk escalating the war into a European, possibly nuclear, one.
It has left the west with an impossible dilemma: stand back and watch Ukrainian cities be reduced to rubble with the deaths of many more civilians inevitable. Or intervene and risk a nuclear conflagration of the kind the world has never seen. It’s a tightrope being walked in western capitals as world leaders calibrate their next tranche of economic sanctions and weigh up what military equipment can be sent to Ukraine without provoking a catastrophic response from Vladimir Putin.
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