If anything, Russia has put themselves in serious shit for invading Ukraine. If they hadn't started this, over 600.000 of their people wouldn't be dead or wounded.
How many countries has NATO invaded?
Not to defend the regime in power then (nor now!), but if you ask Serbia they might offer some other lived experiences on how consensual Operation Allied Force was.
Thought of course you knew that already since you obviously know what the operation was called, a fact basically nobody today knows (without looking it up).
Just because they weren't "defending a NATO member" doesn't mean that the operation was "offensive".
But there is a reason, which curiously enough you neglected to mention. As the other commenter pointed out, it was to stop an active genocide which was being prosecuted by Slobodan Milosevic’s military and paramilitary forces.
> NATO was founded to defend against invasion from e.g. Russia
Would you feel threatened if your neighbours set up weapons right outside your property line, ostensibly to defend in case you attack? And especially if they've already invaded your property twice (France and Germany both invaded Russia).
Russia refused to withdraw from Moldova to implement CFE II. This is not the action of a state worried that it's disadvantage in conventional arms will lead to invasion.
Except that never happened in Ukraine, or in any of the other NATO countries close to Russia.
You know that, right?
The actual Russian perspective is "Let's quickly grab Ukraine before they completely turn towards Europe, otherwise Russia cannot be an empire again."
It may be strange to modern western minds but Russians still consider their imperial project as wholesome, good and nearly sacred. To get into the correct mindstate, you can read for example how Churchill venerated the British empire. The Russians hold this same veneration to their imperial project today. They also know western audience probably would not appreciate this reasoning so they need to invent laughable excuses like ”we were afraid of NATO expansion” that clueless western commentators happily repeat as the foundational reason.
Somebody is refusing to pay protection money and is forming a “neighbourhood watch”. We need to make example of them.
This has nothing to do with NATO. Only with Russian imperialism.