Poor victim Russia. They were forced to start the war, really. Had they not embarked on their campaign of conquest and genocide, NATO would surely have invaded on the 25th of February and killed them all. Luckily, Russia showing their might by stalemating a war against a neighbor a third of their population has deterred evil NATO from directly invading, like what they were surely planning to do. It's evidenced by the absolutely nothing that NATO did towards Russia in the preceding decades, but if you stomp your foot enough about your neighbors freely joining an alliance explicitly designed to safeguard against Russian bloodthirstiness, then you can almost make yourself look like the victim. Almost. At least the Russians buy it, they've been printing the same shit in their media for over a decade now and they can't get enough of it.