Quote:NATO members, excepting Hungary and maybe Turkey are sympathetic enough to Ukraine to believe that arming the Ukrainians is justified.
Turkey has been supplying new Bayraktars and plausibly missiles for the Bayraktars throughout the war.
Russia can't stop the arms deliveries or they already would have tried. If they had the ability they would already be striking the supplies as they enter Ukraine. They likely lack the precision guided munitions necessary for this in the absence of air superiority.
If they did shoot down a C17 over Warsaw (do we really trust that capability, after seeing how much of their kit has underperformed thus far?), it wouldn't stop arms deliveries. Plenty of places western countries could deliver arms to out of the nominal range of Russian SAMs and go overland the rest of the way. Russia doesn't have the missiles to waste on some sort of punitive strike on a Polish city, and they don't have the conventional capabilities to fight anywhere but a limited offensive in the Donbas. Not exactly a scenario to be escalating unless you plan to do it with nukes.
Putin is stuck because he can't really back up those types of threats, and even if he were to follow through on them he is left in an even worse situation militarily.