They’re not entirely wrong on this one narrow issue. Bush and Clinton did, in fact, promise the Russians that in return for them not objecting to the reunification of Germany (which could not have given the Russians the warms & fuzzies), we wouldn’t expand NATO eastward. Well...they held up their end of that bargain and Presidents of both parties didn’t hold up our end. That, at the very least, gave Putin some justification for acting to prevent Ukraine from becoming part of NATO and the potential basing of all kinds of weaponry within a short distance of vital Russian defense installations and most of their big cities.
The simple question is, “what would we have done if the shoe was on the other foot?” As an example, what if after we broke up for 20-30 years and finally started putting our nation back together, we found that the Chinese had allied themselves with most Central American countries and had troops there, and were eying a treaty with the breakaway Republic of Calaznewmextex? We, after all, held those territories for 175+ years, and they are/were an integral part of both our economy and defense establishment. Well, Ukraine had been held by Russia since the mid-1700s.
Believe me, I don’t like agreeing with these Communists about ANYTHING, even what color the sky is, but correct (or mostly so) is correct. We have treated Russia like crap and broken our word to them while making them less secure. We kind of asked for this kind of reaction.
That all said, I do not agree with what Putin is doing or how he is doing it, and I definitely hope that the Russian Army has to leave Ukraine in a couple of weeks with its tail between its legs.
Agreed, and I don't know why more people can't understand this. But we seem to live in a time where people just want to follow what the media is pushing, rather than think about the issues in detail.