When it comes to the ongoing crisis around Ukraine and a supposed Russian invasion, to understand the situation better it is necessary to find out in what cases the escalation may not happen and how each of them should be interpreted.

If we exclude propagandistic explanations, truisms and repetitions, there are only 3 scenarios that could explain a non-escalation should it happen:

1) Ukrainian unilateral surrender, i.e. full UNILATERAL compliance with the Minsk agreements, guarantees of the neutral status and withdrawing the NATO pledge, de-facto recognition of Crimea etc. According to the latest statements of the Ukrainian government has already made it clear, even 50% of this is impossible, hence this scenario remains only theoretical (unless the government suddenly gives in, which is rather unlikely given the level of military purchases it has secured and overall strategy and behavior).

2) Russian unilateral withdrawal of its forces and demonstrative abstinence from any potentially risky moves around Ukraine. In fact, this will mean a Russian surrender, and in this scenario, the West will fully cease the momentum and continue pressuring, not only on Ukraine but on all other potential vantage points as well (South Caucasus, Central Asia, gas export, personal sanctions, etc.). In such an intense standoff where dialogue has become almost non-existing, it simply doesn’t make sense to make compromises and play nice if your rival doesn’t dare to act on its threats and fight back. The current Russian-Western relationship is surely not a win-win game, and it cannot be until President Putin is in power (I guess things may change under another government in the Kremlin- in fact, this forced transit could be the main goal of this game). Even If it's over for now in Ukraine, it doesn't mean it's over in general, moreover, we might expect the multiplication of enforced crises. Most probably Moscow (or at least some of the "Kremlin towers") already understand this.

3) If nothing of this takes place and still no escalation happens- then we must admit that the West (and a number of its fellow travelers such as Israel) is ruled by the incompetent elites who don't care about their reputation and are even ready to destroy their unique advantage in soft power and information reliability. Since if the information about the invasion turns out to be completely misguided, it would mean that acting on this misinformation, the Western countries have shot in their leg, hurt your reputation, their ally Ukraine and helped Russia look like a dove of peace.

Given the rather low possibility of all these scenarios, we can conclude that the probability of a confrontation in whatsoever form is quite high right now.