> If we had kept promise not to expand NATO eastward and hadn’t expanded it to Russia’s borders… <
Yep. As I noted earlier (post #27), everyone involved in this Ukraine/Russia conflict has been reckless. I believe you have correctly identified the reckless behavior on the part of the West.
Was an expanding NATO an actual threat to Russia? It doesn’t matter! What matters is that Russia perceived it as a threat.
The other side of the coin is that Putin was reckless by starting a shooting war. There really are no good guys here.
The expansion of NATO eastward was only part of the problem.
We fomented an illegal coup in Ukraine, installed puppet government hostile to Moscow and those in Ukraine of Russian ethnicity. That setoff a civil war. We helped build and train a 600,000 man Ukraine army and armed Ukraine with lethal weapons. And, we running biolabs with deadly pathogens in them in Ukraine.
If Russia or China had done that in Mexico, we would have invaded, justifiably so.