It is painful to see the Kremlin propaganda has taken root as part of its cognitive warfare.

> How in the world is that question "moot" if it's the driving reason behind Russia's perspective in this? You can disagree with Russia's security perspective, and that's fine. But to just toss out the NATO expansion as "moot" is both historically inaccurate, and borders on deliberately ignorant as if Russia is not allowed its own security concerns in the first place.

This has nothing to do with Russia security, or would you think that the UN would attack Russia? Its a defense organization.

The mistake people make is thinking its a country like France or Germany, but just a bit different. You need to understand that Russia is ruled by a gang of oligarchs and has nothing that functionally resembles the institutions we take for granted. Putin gets what he wants from the parliament, even unanymously when he wants that. There are no laws for Putin and his crownies, the law applies only to his enemies.
The Russia state is a strange amalgamation of intelligence (Puting rose to power from the KGB) and a small group of extremely powerful oligarchs. Then there are layers of smaller oligarchs below that one that run deeper layers of corrupt officials. Its bribery and theft all over the place, its a hugely dysfunctional state. Independent/foreign media outlets have been expelled or terminated, many Russians don´t consume the news anymore. Trust has been lost.

That something horrible would rise from the ashes of Stalins dystopia is not entirely unexpected, but still there are aspects that are really unnerving, like the fact that organised crime runs through all the state affairs, and some oligarchs run even private armies (read up on Wagner for instance). The state kills, tortures and poisons anyone that stands in its way.

Putin needs to feed this whole gang, and the oligarchs take the majority of the economic output for themselves. The economy is segregated. Russians are poor. Russia (like any autocratic state) is severely lacking development, it main income is the export of raw materials like gas and oil. Its BNP is the same as that of the Benelux countries. Mind boggling poverty.
The trouble with this system is the same, it eats everything at home and it needs to find food outside of its door. Thats why you see Russia taking control of neighboring countries, appointing pro-russia puppets to scavenge them. You see the same with Belarus, its president lost control as the people revolted, ran to Putin to keep him in power and thus handing Putin the keys. It is a total surrender. Now that Russia has an even firmer grip, this country will soon be sliced up among the oligarchs.

The people of Ukrain voted to join the EU, it has been doing the needed reforms for a functional democratic country with rule of law. It has been weighting down on Ukrain oligarchs. The economic ties with the Kremlin were weakening and trade started to shift to the EU. Ukrain was making real progress, and the people turned out to be not wanting in the Russian influence.

That is the moment Putin annexed Crimea and started a war that is taking 8 years already. And is not enough. And if you listened closely yesterday, it will never be enough.

The majority of the proxy states around Russia would rather join the West. Putin cant handle a democratic success scenario in one of the former Soviet occupied territories, it has already to handle enough civil unrest in its proxy states.

The whole NATO argument is bullshit, the buffer idea doesn't even make sense in modern militarily reality. Its PR from the Kremlin and its highly effective. Unfortunately.

This system needs to grab economic output from other nations, and will keep doing so. There is only hope for Russian people if the Kremlin is going down, its getting worse there as it always does for autocracy in the end. This never ends well.