> Expecting Russia to ever become a "normal European state" is the main mistake. My entire point is to accept that Russia is authoritarian.

This is exactly the mistake that the US and the EU made: treating Russia not as an ordinary European country from which respect for human rights, free elections and other political, social, and economic rights should be expected, but as a special country entitled to do more than others. The KGB-military circles have ruthlessly exploited this naivety to destroy Russian democracy. They are happy to play uncivilized savages if that means that the US and EU give them freer rein to plunder and subjugate their neighbors and beyond.

  > Figure out what the KGB-military elite want, and give it to them in exchange for a shift in their security posture.

In their wildest dreams, they want total world domination, to assume the role of the Third Rome and the shining beacon of the entire humanity. In practical terms, this means Central and Eastern Europe directly incorporated into Russia and the entire Western Europe turned into anti-American pawns, like East Germany was and Belarus currently is. The Middle East would be divided with Iran, and Asia with China, leaving countries like the Philippines and Australia for China to take over, while others like Japan are turned anti-American through subversion. In the US, they want to fuel instability and separatism through ethnic, social and racial conflicts to keep Americans busy with holding their country together while Russia rules the world.

Dugin's "Foundations of Geopolitics" from 1997 sums the Russian attitude very well and much of that has already been put into action: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics

In short, they want you dead. They want an endless "Los Angeles '92" across the entire US while the Russian kleptocrats plunder the world. The bare minimum they are openly demanding now with ultimatums like the one presented in 2021 is a return to Europe as it was in 1989, half of Europe victimized, the other half terrified that they will be next.

  > The former Eastern Bloc should have been Finlandized: economic intermediaries between Russia and Western Europe, with just enough domestic military capability to discourage Russian hard power, but no actual US military alliance integration to keep the Russians from getting jittery either.

... because neutrality worked so well in the 1930s, and for Belarus and Ukraine in the present day as well? Neutrality allowed Germany and the USSR to pick off their neighbors one by one without fear of a broader response. It has enabled Russia to do the same in the present era, minimizing the risks it faces when attacking a country. Essentially, it all boils down to the fact that your mental image of Russia is wrong. You believe they are scared of their European neighbors and focus on appeasing Russia by castrating their neighbors, whereas Russia is playing up its security concerns solely to shape the battlefield in its favor for its expansionist ambitions.

  > Then we went and followed that up by announcing we wanted ABM sites on Russia's doorstep to protect Europe from "errant Iranian nuclear missiles" which was obvious bullshit.

The problem that Russians had with the US ABM site in Romania was due to deepening US-Romanian defense cooperation which reduces Russia's opportunities to turn Romania into another puppet state like Belarus at the very least, not because the site posed any danger to Russia. The Romanian ABM site lies on the direct flight path between Iran and large US military bases in Germany and makes perfect sense that the US would want to have an ABM site there. The missiles at the Romanian site are unable to reach Russian missile launching sites, nor are they on their flight path.

Examples like this clearly show that you have been consuming Russian propaganda without pulling out a globe and a measuring tape to check whether there is any actual credibility to the prepackaged narratives.