The formation of WWIII and how much your personal wish not to die in it won't matter
...Is there something meaningful to say during these days where the events of today also progress on their way tomorrow? Unimpressed and not impacted by personal opinions of anyone outside of circles of power and public influence
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What about these? :
Afghanistan - not settled
Irak - not completely settled
Libya - not settled
Syria - not settled
Mali/Central Africa Republic/some other African countries attached to former French colonial territory that now has to fight every now and then with the African branch of Al Quaida or the Islamic State - not settled
Armenia - Azerbaijan - not settled (only frozen at the moment)
Balkan states - nothing left behind from the destruction of Yugoslavia solved (conflict only rests because of the locally-present KFOR troops)
Growing or existing political tensions which every now and then are getting fueled:
Saudi Arabia - Israel - Iran
China - Taiwan
China - Japan - US
Grusiya (Georgia) - Russia
Greece - Türkiye
Türkiye - Kurdish people
Baltic States and Poland - Russia
DPRK (North Korea) - South Korea
The whole so-called "Western community" consisting of merely 24 countries in the world - Russia
Western community (some more openly, some less frankly) - China
US - China
US - Russia
Islamic State - rest of the world (especially the Western part of the world)
Wars already taking place openly:
Saudi Arabia - Yemen - open war with no end in sight yet
Syria - the radical Islamist groups haven't been erased completely from the territory yet (and from the whole Middle East region)
Ukraine - Russia - with strong background support from NATO countries (esp. the US, Poland & the Baltic states) for Ukraine; and limited assistance from Iran, Syria & the DPRK for Russia
If taking all that together, or just overseeing it on the world map - that's a whole lot of potential left for escalation, and if just parts of that should happen, there is no question anymore about if being a world war because is is one.
The point you might not see from your US-socialized view is: World Wars didn't only mean "war between world powers" but also "war over a large scale of territory of planet earth".
WWII set Europe from Lisbon to Moscow and the Bosporus in flames, Hitler even tried to get support for his "final solution of the Jewish question" at the Grand Mufti of Palestine, and then on the other side of the globe, it set Japan to China and the Korean peninsula and Japan all the way down almost until Australia and to the East to Pearl Harbor in flames.
Adding the various endeavors of The Third Reich and fascist Italy in Mostly (North-)Africa to "gain new living space". (e. g. Italy was in Libya).
The whole world was practically involved in any of the activities of the powers who were attempting for world domination and the way of life they deemed as "the right one".
And that's the picture that I see coming together here in the rpesent too.
Lots of tensions, some on a local base, but even more with the potential to expand to general conflicts that will safely involve bigger "players" too.
Why is that?
Because the US-dominated world has reached the point of overextension. There is no more space to grow into other than to steal another party's share of the cake in order to increase one's own overall share of it.
In a physical world with limits, this is the way things become sooner or later. All the terrotories have been defined, but the territories under one's own control don't offer enough material for growth anymore. So there is the need for expansion against someone else's will - in order to generate new growth.
And those areas still not harvested by the mighty and powerful of the US circles lie in Central and East Asia, which have raised up under the star of Communism in the last century and founded their own circles of mighty and powerful people.
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I agree that the US has its fingers in a great many pies around the world, and that the US has plainly overextended itself, whereas China is rising and other regional powers are chomping at the bit. My number one statistic for our overextension is that our gigantic budget deficit is even larger than our gigantic military budget - we're putting our entire global dominance on the credit card!
As for whether/when this will break out into general global hostilities ... I have no idea, but I wouldn't be surprised if it happened during this decade. Up through 2016 the US had a bipartisan pro-China approach to our foreign and trade policies. We've reversed and now have a bipartisan anti-China approach. This increases the chances of conflict. The tighter we draw the noose around China, the more likely she will lash out in violence, as happened with Japan in 1941 after we imposed an oil embargo.
And we may yet see the Ukraine war spill into other countries who have zero love for Russian annexation, because they've experienced it directly themselves - especially Poland and the Baltic states. Ancient Eastern European animosities have not yet disappeared ...
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You know, even those things that came together in the last couple of years weren't foreseeable and it appears like a "spinning up the tempo" of world events/history.
So... it becomes harder to tell, realistically, what might happen in the coming few foreseeable years and which drastric events may also kick in that come literally out of nowhere - events which weren't on anyone's tab, but prove to be very altering to the then current state of things.
I think what you Western folks need to come down from is this old myth of Russia being obsessed with devouring its neighboring countries just because they once were "part of it/part of its sphere of influence". This way of thinking is as primitive as it's emotional.
It's not about conquering foreign countries because "our collection is still missing something" or because of literal "joy" about this business.
It's about certain Eastern European countries practicing a radical anti-Russia policy for decades, and under that umbrella, they come to even be hostile against simple Russian citizens.
One could live with a such policy related to international relations - this would be something to accept in the mainframe of "every country in the world has a right to organize its issues itself" -, but it's unacceptable if just simple citizens become victim of such policies. For example: Being denied citizenship, getting displaced only because of a national/ethnic/biological heritage.
And, it's equally unacceptable - or better say: it's concerning -, if those hostilities against your country and who this other country declares to be "your citizens" are carried by political forces which in the past already sought total war - a war of annihilation - against you.
You overseas folks often show a bit unable to understand these things as you're used to think only in a black&white-problem in terms of "racism". It's completely off your radar that there is also such a thing as "racism of people of the same skin color against each other". That what is known here as "Rassenideologie" (in English: "raciology") in its most complex excess.
And that is a matter which Russians have been victim of, varying in stronger or weaker extents over time, since at least the last century.
Another thing I'd like to add from state matters: During the times when Stalin was in command, the viewpoint onto the territories which have left the Rus' and which are now independent states was much different as it hadn't been so long ago that outside forces achieved the independence of these territories on their endeavor to conquer the Russian territory.
Additionally, fascists all were to be found in them in the positions of power.
Today, those ambitions and the factual formal independence have far more history and their back and therefore its unrealistic to think of a "full return" of those territories into the Russian sphere like a returning piece of one's country.
Someone like Putin can be guessed to know that (as he acts pretty rational).
On top of that, and that's something that should be very well known to people like him too: These former territories of the Rus' are plagued with corruption, crime, ill development and non-development so much in the present day - it's literally like an iron ball and chain tied your foot if you suddenly had to care for these areas.
Every intelligent statesman would actively refuse and try to make its way around having to deal with this.
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