Do you really think Russia is financially in a much better state? And apparently their railway system is in shambles now too.
Compared to Yeltsin's days yes, the difference from them to now is our media and the political scene had more serious people in it.
The neocons in the US want escalation, because potentially, in that scenario, if some powerful people in Russia start to worry where this thing is heading they could coup Putin. It happened to Gorbachev, obviously for different reasons.
These ATACMS are the last thing on the menu afaik, that and the storm shadow cruise missiles, can the Russian air defence systems minimise the damage. If so, then Putin can probably say I don't want to escalate because Biden has lost his mind, and not lose too much face.
Depends on the damage the missiles do, if they hit nuclear early warning systems and core infrastructure, who knows where that could lead to. Edit: Also civilians, if they get hit badly e.g.a towerblock of flats is destroyed, then all bets are off. Who chooses and vets the targets, you'd think a US official must have the final say.
No doubt Ukraine will face more missile barrages in return, but not like Israel on gaza though as there is no ethnicity/religious battle here, it's Slavic people fighting one another:
(Wiki) The Slavic languages belong to the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family. Present-day Slavs are classified into three groups:
West Slavs (Czechs, Kashubians, Poles, Silesians, Slovaks, and Sorbs);
East Slavs (Belarusians, Russians, Rusyns, and Ukrainians);
South Slavs (Bosniaks, Bulgarians, Croats, Gorani, Macedonians, Montenegrins, Serbs, and Slovenes).