Ukraine’s devastating assault on a Russian air base at the Crimean peninsula this week has sent shock waves rippling across the Continent, and in markedly different directions. 

The view from Britain is notably supportive, which is in line with London’s standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Kyiv since the earliest days of the Russian invasion in February. The Telegraph newspaper reported that the destruction of up to 20 jets in the attack spells Russia’s biggest loss of aircraft in a single day since World War II. 

An article in an influential Italian daily, La Stampa, takes another view: “Kyiv wants Crimea back, leads us to world war,” its leading foreign affairs analyst, Domenico Quirico, wrote on Friday. 

That the assessment appears in La Stampa is stunning in itself: The Turin-based newspaper is the one that broke the story of questionable interactions between a representative of the former Italian deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, and Russian officials. Critics say the exchange paved the way for the fall of Prime Minister Draghi’s governing coalition. Yet even strenuously anti-Russia voices in Italy are rattled by what is widely seen as a seismic shift on the summer battlefield.

In Mr. Quirico’s estimation, Moscow will perceive the consequences of attacks by Ukrainian forces on the historically Russian peninsula of “Sevastopol and Count Tolstoy” very differently from the ongoing battles for control over the economically important but otherwise more obscure eastern Donbas region. Russia seized and subsequently illegally annexed the Crimean peninsula in 2014. “If President Zelensky, as he announced in one of his recent evening video addresses to the nation, has decided to start the ‘return of the territories’ with Crimea, these next six months will turn out to be only a temporary stage before hell,” Mr. Quirico wrote. 

More troubling is what the eminent Italian journalist sees as a coming clash between Washington and its European allies. This is because in his view the Ukrainian leader would not take such an audacious step without the go-ahead from Washington, but that dynamic could eventually put America and Europe at loggerheads — ostensibly because Europe will bear the immediate brunt of an unpredictable Russian reaction to emboldened Ukrainian tactics. 

“An attempt to retake Crimea, a maneuver that cannot happen without a green light from the Americans, means that the prevailing idea will be to fight to the bitter end, a total battle, without limit of means; and the elimination of what little is left of the possibility of a treaty and settlement of competing claims,” Mr. Quirico wrote. He said he believes this is “the only path that leads at least to a truce.”

He is not alone in that view. By contrast with more distant Britain, pundits and policymakers in countries closer to the war zone such as Greece, Hungary, and, to a certain extent, Germany have been voicing growing concerns over what seems to be a war that is not only not ending but appears to be intensifying. 

In his video address on Tuesday night, Mr. Zelensky did not mention the attack, but he did say: “We will not forget that the Russian war against Ukraine began with the occupation of Crimea,” adding that “this Russian war … began with Crimea and must end with Crimea — with its liberation.”

The BBC reported that “any attack on Crimea by Ukraine would be considered deeply serious by Moscow,” which may be one reason that a Ukrainian presidential adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, denied that Ukraine was behind the blasts. He told Dozhd, an online television channel, “What do we have to do with this?” 

The stakes are getting higher: Last month, the BBC also reported that the former Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, warned that “Judgment Day will instantly await” should Ukraine target Crimea. Even if the new round of saber rattling is making some in Europe nervous, it’s clear that Russian threats, however pointed, will not deter Ukraine’s counter-offensives.