It's like they think there's some sort of law of physics that prevent Putin interpreting smashing Russia in any indirect way is acceptable to Russia and not a declaration of war.
Rome did it with Germanic tribes, China did with step tribes. You help the little guy fight the big guy to sap them, but avoid going head to head. When they failed at this, they’d get run over.
Direct help is a generally understood act of war. We’re tip toeing that line right now with what we’re already doing. And we should be afraid because there isn’t a quorum calling the shots in Russia right now. It’s essentially 1 man’s mood and folks trying to talk him down.
It turns out now that Javelins and other man portable missiles are doing quite a good job in this war. The Turkish Bayraktar drone too [1]. That's what they need. And intelligence, and help on the cyber side, on the economic side and on the PR side. And they are getting all of those.
And more: they just sent a bunch of helicopters to Romania to have them fixed.
The Mig thing is just an unnecessary escalation, and the benefit is quite dubious too.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=890z0skXQzI
[2] https://www.romaniajournal.ro/society-people/defmin-nine-ukr...
When we went into Afghanistan and Iraq, Russia kept from directly confronting us. There was an issue once with Turkey and Russian planes around Syria once or twice, but rarely got into direct line of fire of each other and kept things going though proxies.
If we go beyond proxies that would breach precedent protocol and would be uncharted strategy.