> It is not my point of view, I am not a fan of empires in general, but the "NATO aggression" is obviously the expansion of the NATO to the east ..
I mean, it is your point of view, which is shared by the Russian regime narrative as you know, hence why it's confusing.
Once again when you say "the expansion of the NATO" you're framing it like an army marched into the east seizing territory and enforcing themselves onto sovereign states that wanted nothing to do with NATO. Or that NATO threatened countries to join them "or else" like Russia does.
And my question is why are you framing it like that?
Because NATO is a defensive alliance, which countries can apply to join. No nation was threatened into joining NATO.
In case you didn't know both USSR and Russia signed agreements, memorandums and charters that stated Sovereign countries are entitled to choose their own economic and defensive alliances - ALL SOVEREIGN COUNTRIES, no exceptions here.
By your logic, the WTC is an imperialist project, which is nonsense. Or agreements Russia had with Western countries, would be once again "imperialist western expansion"... very confusing and illogical stuff.
Gorbachev himself clearly stated so, when he said that there was NO such thing as promises of non-NATO integration of eastern countries (which the Russian regime continues to try to spin these lies when the man himself denied any such promise).
And by the way, former soviet states applied to join NATO when the world witnessed Russia restarting expansionism through war in case you didn't know.
So once again, it isn't very clear.
> And I doubt you can find many russians living in russia who are confused by this. They understand.
Clearly, they don't understand, why do you think hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of young and educated Russians fled Russia when the war started?