EsCalAtIng.
I mean you definitely hear more about it. And by the way didn’t they just recently get permission to use Western weapons to attack Russian territory? I’d say that’s escalating (but not an escalation of the conflict as a whole as you pointed out).
That’s due to the fact of having homegrown cruise and ballistic missiles now, so posturing about usage of western weapons have no point. (There was no point ot start with, russia will tell tales about f35 killing 78 children with it tracks and nuclear artillery anyway) So this phase was semi-inevitable.
❓ What’s your definition of escalation?
Neither severity nor scale of the conflict risen, destruction of kursk npp in kurchatov would be a slight escalation, to be honest unless anyone starts to use WMD and/or huge area denial techniques (like dropping tons of chloride trifluoride on enemy territory every day) it won’t be escalation of this war.