It seems to me on the face of it that the story in the article is about Nato, and the US in particular, trying *not* to escalate. So my hope is that no.
Still, it's obviously been on my mind, as everybody else's, how long before things get out of hand. I'm worried especially about the risks of Putin "lashing out": at the moment, the War is at the very least going far worse than Russia would have hoped, and the response in terms of Sanctions has surely been many times more severe than anticipated. But cornered animals are especially dangerous. What if Putin decides, in effect, that if he can't have Kyiv, nobody can? How does Nato respond in that case?
I don't know the answers to these questions. I only hope that Putin, despite acting like a madman in the last few months leading up to this, has enough semblance of rationality left to never go down that road, and accept defeat -- or, at least, some ugly compromise that suits nobody but at least ends the War.