In my, admittedly non-expert, opinion the odds that this will grow into a war between NATO and Russia are high... IF that happens, NATO will quickly annihilate Russia in a conventional battle.

Given the behavior of Russian leaders and their deranged rhetoric I fear that would mean nuclear war. Now, it is also possible that the Russians are actually sane and the nuclear saber rattling is just a tactic to frighten the world into letting them have their way... the problem is that when you threaten to use nukes, then you increase the internal expectations within your government- If Putin threatens to go nuclear, loses the conventional battle and then fails to follow through on his threat then he will look weaker still- he will be removed and probably meet a rather gruesome end... so he, personally, has nothing to lose by using nukes... he is facing the end of HIS world either way.

I genuinely hope humanity never uses nuclear weapons in war ever again- even a small scale exchange- say between India and Pakistan - could collapse human civilization, leading to a death toll that dwarfs anything our species has seen before.

But no matter how the Russia/Ukraine conflict turns out, we are looking at a long period of global conflict and instability- ~25% of the world's wheat production is probably suddenly gone off the market now- there were quite a few countries that relied on that source of food from Russia and Ukraine. Even if Russia had never invaded Ukraine we were looking at increasing instability as climate change leads to mass migration and conflicts over dwindling resources.

Here in the US, the economic hardship and fear over this uncertainty in Ukraine has likely ensured the fascists will take over, our democracy will likely end this year... the coalition of allies that have put up such strong opposition to Russia is very likely doomed to fall apart as a result.

We are looking down the barrel of doom and/or a new dark age.

New Zealand would be a good place to live right now...