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I disagree this is just simply underscoring the well known fact that any nuclear armed regime would not allow itself to be topped by an outside power in conventional warfare without using said nukes to defend itself.
Effectively this is nothing new to anyone making decisions at this scale. If any country thinks that they'd be able to conventionally topple a nuclear power without a nuclear response they have the worst military planners ever.
If we replayed Barbarossa with Stalin having nukes, he would have never let the blitz get to Stalingrad let alone cross the Dnipro or arguably the Dneister. Whether the nukes target the front or the enemy cities doesn't really matter in these scenarios because the reaction/overreaction would effectively be world ending anyway.
The reality is that at this point ATACMS aren't going to do much, even if Ukraine defies the US and uses them outside "Kursk" (which has been a lulzy explainer by DoD tbh since they shot at Bryansk) they still aren't going to do much to turn the tide except give the US realistic data on how rocket artillary works against Russian interceptors.
There's like 225 possible targets within range, and Ukraine has fewer than 50 ATACMS missiles.
https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/8b060c46ee6f49908f9fb415ad23051c
Also this is the response to the fact that Ukraine used ATACMS on Bryansk, which were shot down.
So this is just saber rattling/dunking on your enemy. Russia is basically saying, even if your wildest dreams of NAFO ATACMS FAFO SHIBE DOGE HIMARS GHOST OF KYIV were possible and you could march straight up to Moscow under the cover of all Western power projection capabilities, we'd still retaliate with nukes. They will not simply capitulate to moving the front to a less advantageous position for them, even if it was technically possible as it is in the magical thinking scenarios of Westerners.
I think you misunderstand the problem here. The real issue is that these types of long range missiles can carry a nuclear payload. If Russia detects that a bunch of nuclear capable missiles are flying to Russia then they have to make call on whether it is a genuine nuclear first strike or just a conventional weapons attack. Russia has to treat that as a nuclear strike because otherwise deterrence does not work. It would tell NATO they can just lob nuclear capable missiles into Russia without any response, and at some point they could lob nuclear missiles. That's what makes the whole situation so incredibly dangerous.
Dismissing this as sabre rattling is incredibly misguided.
There's no known nuclear version of ATACMS, and even if we go by this logic Ukraine could also claim that they don't know if Russian Kh-101s carried by Tu-160 bombers (part of Russia's strategic nuclear forces) are nuclear armed or not, so they don't know if they're under nuclear attack or not.
The real issue with ATACMS missiles being used to attack Russian territory, as explained by Lavrov today and Putin earlier, is that it relies on US and NATO satellites for guidance, and US/NATO specialists to input attacking information and flight paths. So in essence, you have US military specialists and assets directly taking part in conducting strikes on Russian territory and military facilities within Russia. Something that didn't even happen during the cold war. That's what makes it a huge escalation.
Ukraine can claim whatever it likes, they're just a proxy. However, if Russia started lobbing Iskanders into Texas from Mexico then we'd be instantly in WW3 scenario. But yeah, NATO directly attacking Russia is the real escalation here.