And the CIA has spoken.
But his goes much further back. The creeping NATO crush is the narrative that speaks volumes. The NATO encroachment eventually ended in the Ukranian showdown.
There is no other way to see this. And the CIA is pushing the narrative.
Of course there’s another way to see this. The Russian narrative is unadulterated revisionist bullcrap.
NATO expansion didn’t threaten Russia. Putin, in 2001, when he tipped NATO off about Al Qaeda 2 days before 9/11 and was first out of the door to offer the USA assistance.
He was perfectly fine with NATO getting involved in the wake of 9/11. The cretin just doesn’t want NATO to get in the way of him imposing his excremental, ultra-corrupt gangster autocracy on the free nations that chose Europeanisation over Russification when the Iron Curtain fell.