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> NATO, while being hostile towards Russia attempted to expand to Ukraine, which is just not acceptable at all.

That literally didn't happen. Ukraine and Georgia sought NATI membership, and in the 2008 NATO summit were (largely at Russia’s urging) rebuffed from being given Membership Action Plans; Russia immediately invaded Georgia, and Ukraine abandoned pursuit of NATO membership.

Then, in 2014, the Ukrainian people threw out the pro-Russian leadership that had come to power in the interim. Russia invaded large swathes of the country and, after that, Ukraine’s government again started seeking NATO membership.

There were no approaches by either side being made before the invasion. Pro-Russian propagandists like to pretend the 2022 escalation was the initial Russian invasion, ignoring most of the time the war has been being fought, so that they can blame the war starting on Ukraine’s response to the invasion by which Russia actually started the war.

I think you forgot that part where Putin wants to establish the Russian empire again.

Nobody gave the slightest fuck about Russia. Even the annexation of Crimea and the proxy war in the Donbas was mostly ignored.

There was ZERO chance of Ukraine joining NATO. Do you really think that Hungary, Germany, Slovakia..... would vote for Ukraine membership while there are still disputes in the Donbas and about Crimea?

@2) Sure, and Hitler also only saved the Sudetendeutschen.....

Putin himself said 2002 that he would have no problems with Ukraine joining NATO: “I am absolutely convinced that Ukraine will not shy away from the processes of expanding interaction with NATO and the Western allies as a whole. Ukraine has its own relations with NATO; there is the Ukraine-NATO Council. At the end of the day the decision [on Ukraine joining NATO] is to be made by NATO and Ukraine. It is a matter for those two partners.”

Considering that Trump now, all but disbanded NATO there should be no more reason for further Russian attacks, no?

But really, just read and watch Russian media, listen to their politicians. The aggressive imperial aim is very open, transparent and also accepted by the people.

> Nobody gave the slightest fuck about Russia.

It really is tiring listening to the Russian apologetics coming from other posters in this thread.

"Russia felt threatened"

No. Nobody wants to invade Russia.

The deal since the end of the cold war has been this: Russia can do whatever the hell it likes inside its own borders. Its oligarchs with Putin at the front can rob and pillage the country to their hearts content. Putin can use his loyal FSB to suppress the opposition, rig elections, and dominate the domestic media and brainwash his population to believe whatever he want them to believe. The rest of the world will do no more about this than hand out tiny wrist slaps, while holding their noses and trading with Russia. They kept their seat in the UN security council. They were invited into G7. They were treated as an equal to larger, richer, liberal, democracies.

The only reason there is war in Ukraine is because this incredibly generous deal was not enough for Putin and his ilk, they wanted more. More influence, more power, more vassals. They want to restore the mythical glory of the Russian empire, or the Soviet empire, or both. They want all the territories that Russia has ever held dominion over. Getting control over Ukraine would have given that dream a big territory, population, and economical boost.

> "Russia felt threatened"

Are you Russian top military executive or a president of Russia?

No? Then don't speak what Russia did or did not feel.

> No. Nobody wants to invade Russia.

Then don't name Russia as the most probable enemy in your militaristic charts in your military alliance that keeps on expanding beyond reasonable limits.

And don't expand your military alliance that close to Russia's borders.

> The deal since the end of the cold war has been this: Russia can do whatever the hell it likes inside its own borders.

The other side of the deal was NATO not getting any expansions packs. But oh, shoot, it just slipped and happened to expand to... how many countries since Soviet Union got dissolved? ah?

Destroying Soviet Union was not enough for the West and so it wants a piece of Russia now? If you think so - then come and die in Ukraine, you are welcome there.

Here is Putin 2002:

“I am absolutely convinced that Ukraine will not shy away from the processes of expanding interaction with NATO and the Western allies as a whole. Ukraine has its own relations with NATO; there is the Ukraine-NATO Council. At the end of the day the decision [on Ukraine joining NATO] is to be made by NATO and Ukraine. It is a matter for those two partners.”

Why should nations be beholden to verbal agreements that were never ratified by their elected officials, between parties that didn't exist any more in the case of the Warshaw pact and whose legal successor nation official stated they had no problem with it.

Thats silly.

Should NATO have never had any talks with Russia about a possible NATO membership because of that verbal agreement with the leader of the Warshaw Pact Gorbachev?

That was in 2002, when it looked like after years of cold war U.S. and Russia can finally become good allies. That was before U.S. along with a group of other (mostly NATO) countries invaded Iraq in 2003 without any mandate in U.N. and which Russia has opposed to and before the invasion of Libya in 2011, before U.S. carried out Arab Spring in 2010-2012 and before U.S. carried out colour revolutions, especially Rose Revolution in Georgia in 2003 and... Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004.

It is not a secret at all that U.S. carried those out and then it became quite clear that U.S. installs marionette regimes here and there and one of the places was... Ukraine.

Right after all those Russo-American relations going up, up and up merely some years ago.

Russia didn't like being stabbed in the back at all.

You can't really bring non binding, non serious agreements that were never put in writing or ratified and that all parties declared no longer relevant back from the dead and feign moral outrage. That's ridiculous.

What does "legally binding" do good at all? There are no other laws other than the rule of the strength.

U.S. was strong for a long time. It did whatever it liked.

Now Russia restored some of its strength to the point it can show others that sometimes you have to listen to when a bear warns you (quite calmly and nicely first).

For one, if it is ratified in a democratic nation that means that the people had a say in it through their elected representatives.

That way the other party knows that this agreement has some backing and staying power.

Not some dude spouting some ideas to counterparts during very very turbulent times.

Who decides if a nation is democratic or not?

Many people (even Americans) claim U.S. is not a democracy. Every country has corruption to some degree. The only backing and staying power there is - is the force a country has and its willingness to use it to defend something.

Imagine the paradox: holding the fate of the world in your hands, but still feeling under threat from a military alliance like NATO

Easily imaginable: every country with big enough nuclear arsenal could be viewed as a country holding the fate of the world in its hands.

But since there can be multiple such countries at the same time and since no one has stopped developing arms/tech even further - I wouldn't call it a paradox when one nuclear country feels threatened by another group of both nuclear and non-nuclear countries coming closer and closer to its borders.

The difference between a rational person and a narcissist is this: one recognizes the sufficiency of world-destroying power, the other will always demand more, regardless of the absurdity.