President Biden threw cold water on recent escalatory rhetoric about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine metastasizing into a third world war, but the debut of Moscow’s retaliatory measures against American sanctions will soon make it clear that the new Cold War is already on high heat. 

During a visit to Pennsylvania on Friday, Mr. Biden said, “The idea that we’re going to send in offensive equipment and have planes and tanks and trains going in, American pilots and American crews, just understand. Don’t kid yourself, no matter what you all say, that’s called World War III, okay?” The president added, “Let’s get it straight here, guys. There’s an old expression, ‘Don’t kid a kidder.’”

By unleashing his war machine on neighboring Ukraine, President Putin has created plenty of facts on the ground to ratchet up the speculation about a wider conflict, from Russian airstrikes coming perilously close to active nuclear reactors to very public announcements about putting Russian nuclear defenses on a higher state of alert. 

Yet Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, Mr. Putin’s long-serving top diplomat, has on prior occasions blamed the American president for needlessly raising the prospects of World War III. In this respect, Mr. Biden’s remarks yesterday could be seen as an attempt to dial back tensions.

The hard fact that the war in Ukraine has entered its 17th day, with major cities like Mariupol battered by Russian airstrikes and artillery fire and only half-hearted attempts at a ceasefire, at best means more misery is almost certain to come. The question in the ongoing slugfest between the White House and the Kremlin is, how low will the blows go?

One punch just reached into the final frontier, space: In retaliation for the harsh new round of sanctions the White House announced yesterday, the Russian Space Agency has threatened to strand American astronaut Mark Vande Hei in space and crash the International Space Station to the ground. According to an ABC news report, Dmitry Rogozin, who heads up the Russian Space Agency, posted his threat via social media: “If you block cooperation with us, who will save the International Space Station (ISS) from an uncontrolled deorbit and fall into the United States or … Europe?” In that same Twitter post, Irish news site Buzz reports, Mr. Rogozin warned that the station’s orbit and location in space are controlled by Russian engines.

While weightless in space, the ISS weighs in at 500 tons. It is a collaboration among America, Russia, Japan, Canada, and the European Space Agency, with one Orbital Segment operated by America and the other by Russia. Last month Mr. Biden announced sanctions that would result in the cutting of half of Russia’s high-tech imports, saying in a White House address on February 24, “It’ll degrade their aerospace industry, including their space program.”

Currently in orbit, Mr. Vande Hei is scheduled to return to Earth with the Russian cosmonauts via a Russian Soyuz spacecraft on March 30. Despite the threat, Buzz reports that NASA has said “no changes are planned” regarding U.S. and Russian cooperation concerning the ISS.

Back on terra firma, an article filed for both the Jerusalem Post and Israeli newspaper Maariv says the Israeli prime minister, Naftali Bennett, has advised President Zelensky to surrender to Russia but was met by a refusal. Mr. Bennett is said to have told Mr. Zelensky to take the offer made by Mr. Putin to end the war  — “which includes many Ukrainian sacrifices — in a phone call on Tuesday, according to an official in Ukraine’s government.”

The source claimed that the phone call was initiated by the Israeli prime minister, who only last week, on the Jewish Shabbat, made a surprise visit to Moscow to meet with the Russian president. 

Underscoring the gravity of the situation, he reportedly told Ukraine’s president, “If I were you, I would think about the lives of my people and take the offer.”

According to the unidentified Ukrainian official cited in the report, Mr. Zelensky politely but steadfastly refused the offer. 

Ukraine appeared to push back against the report on Saturday morning, as an advisor to Mr. Zelensky, Mykhailo Podolyak, tweeted that Israel, “just as other conditional intermediary countries, does NOT offer Ukraine to agree to any demands of the Russian Federation.” 

Precisely what that offer was, and how much of it may yet be on the table, cannot be confirmed with ironclad accuracy but an earlier report in the Jerusalem Post by that newspaper’s eagle-eyed Lahav Harkov, who analyzed reports in Hebrew media, sums up its key elements: Mr. Zelensky would have to give up on the Donbass region and agree to his country having a smaller army, as well as declare neutrality between Russia and the West and abandon his attempt to join NATO.

Jerusalem views gaps between the Russian and Ukrainian sides as shrinking, Harkov reports, citing Mr. Zelensky’s recent comments that he has cooled on joining NATO and could negotiate on Donbass and Crimea, and noting that Russia has backed down from calling for Ukraine’s total demilitarization and has pivoted more to discussions about demilitarizing only the areas in dispute. 

These reports come amid Russia’s blatant ongoing violation of Ukrainian sovereignty and a military campaign against the country as a whole that as of this weekend only appears to be ramping up — in the besieged city of Marioupol; in the west near the Polish border, where yesterday Russian cruise missiles destroyed a Ukrainian airbase; in cities like Kharkiv, reeling from heavy aerial bombardment, and in the capital of Kiev, whose remaining residents have fortified the streets against an anticipated, if stalled, attack by a large Russian armed convoy now encircling the city. 

Saturday began with reports of five Russian rocket attacks destroying another Ukrainian airbase — the latest one at Vasylkiv, outside Kiev — and Russian forces shelling a mosque in Mariupol where Ukraine’s foreign ministry said 80 adults and children had taken refuge.