The problem is that history shows that they won’t just be a part of Russia. This has happened over and over again. They murk everything into submission then they keep murking everything when they feel like it. Chechnya is the biggest example of this very same game plan. They cut out a notch as a future launching pad. They come up with a random reason to invade, then they knock everything down, rape, pillage, play skeet shoot with the babies, find a military aged males and kill them. They’ll take all the money put everybody to work and all the production goes back to Russia. A lot of the former satellites are doing relatively well on their own. Why would they want to go back to being serfs.
There’s no issue with them fighting back. The money given to them is already spent, the equipment they’re being given was just going to sit their until it was playfully expended at a range. Why the hell would they surrender? To be like Chechnya, Daegestan, the Tajiks? Being a Russian satellite is not what you seem to think it is.
Nothing is going to escalate and if it ever does it will end with Russians doing what they always do and going back within they’re own borders. They’re a weak version of imperial Japanese if they never changed their culture. It never had anything to do with NATO.
Russia is that snot nosed kid in 3rd grade, named Romello, who’s mother cusses him out cause he looks too much like his father, and he randomly punches other kids in the face for no reason.