The continued inevitable and disastrous slide into a WW3 nuclear-armed confrontation between Russian and the West continues as The New York Times reports NATO appears to actually be seriously mulling sending troops to Ukraine to serve in the role as 'trainers' at a moment Kiev is desperate to tap and train up new manpower. And this would be closer to front line positions as well.

"NATO allies are inching closer to sending troops into Ukraine to train Ukrainian forces, a move that would be another blurring of a previous red line and could draw the United States and Europe more directly into the war," NY Times wrote Thursday. What has changed? The Zelensky government is now directly requesting it, apparently on a formal level for the first time of the conflict, according to officials.

The Times confirms "Ukrainian officials have asked their American and NATO counterparts to help train 150,000 new recruits closer to the front line for faster deployment."

The report assures that at this moment anyway, the US is still saying 'no'; however chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr has said an eventual deployment of trainers inside Ukraine looks inevitable. "We'll get there eventually, over time," he said.

The Joint Chiefs chairman said this while admitting in the next breath that US and NATO trainers positioned in Ukraine would essentially be sitting ducks under the bombs of superior Russian airpower:

For now, he said, an effort inside Ukraine would put "a bunch of NATO trainers at risk" and would most likely mean deciding whether to use precious air defenses to protect the trainers instead of critical Ukrainian infrastructure near the battlefield. General Brown briefed reporters on his plane en route to a NATO meeting in Brussels.

The report was published the same day that Ukraine's President Zelensky in his nightly address issued a desperate appeal to Western allies saying that "Russia is trying to expand the war" and that "we must force Russia to a real, just peace by all means."