Oh yes and he isn't known for lying.

"From Putins interview he does explicitly say that he wouldn't be in this position if the NATO didn't push for Ukraine, as simple as that."

No, it's definitely not that. Taking Putin's word at face value is completely irrational.

His actions and other policy objectives have made it clear that he and the Russian State do not view Ukraine as a legit country and have literally been invading it for the last decade wile the West twiddled their thumbs.

Taking Ukraine is a primary objective of the Russian State under Putin - that's the more 'simple' thing to understand.

Anything he says on the news is a 'game'. It's not even really a complicated game, we have all of their books, their doctrine, we know exactly how they think it's just a matter of applying it.

In hindsight it will be hard for anyone to fathom how we didn't see all of this coming. We're literally watching it happen in real-time, from a very well established playbook.

FYI have a read [1]

This is Putin's grand thesis. He basically narrates a history in which Ukraine is just part of Russia.

This has nothing to do with NATO.

http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181

Putin says a lot of things. Like “we’re not going to invade Ukraine”.

He’s always advocated for a return to USSR borders.

Until this morning, Putin was saying that he wasn't going to invade. Perhaps trusting Putin at his exact word is not the best idea?

Putin basically made himself the dictator of a country, where political opposition and free journalism is repressed. Where a big % of the GDP is spent on military rather than on the social, economical issues the population suffers from. I don't trust a thing he says, he is a psychopath driven by a massive ego and an bottomless hunger for power.