The position is understandable because Russia is playing a Grand Strategy Game in the past, and doesn't want the enemy ( NATO) to be at all their borders. Justified? Right? Humane? Absolutely not.
All that is purely academic now so, with people in Ukraine dying over this shit.
> All that is purely academic now so, with people in Ukraine dying over this shit.
That is not purely academic. Framing what Russia is doing now as kinda similar to Czech voluntary joining Nato is word class propaganda. It is in fact a lie.
This escalation started decades ago, and was totally foreseeable. And yes, the discussion about the root causes, what-ifs and past errors becomes pointless once bullets fly and people start to die.
USSR was literally Russia + occupied countries. Saying it is understandable is like saying it would be understandable for Germany to attack Poland and France again, because Third Reich went that far too.
Perhaps it was when you said, "Of those two, Russia and NATO, the only expansion since the end of the cold war and the fall of the USSR was done by NATO."
It seems that we are being reminded that it has not.