Our govt has been playing with fire for the last few decades when it comes to Russia, so you can’t blame them when they finally react to our poking. It’s almost like the Deep State wants America to be at war in perpetuity & ppl like you are rooting them on.
There were, admittedly, various verbal assurances and discussions about limiting NATO's eastward expansion towards the U.S.S.R., but there was never any binding legal basis for that scurrilous claim. U.S. Sec'y of State James Baker, for instance, made a verbal statement to the effect that NATO would not expand "one inch eastward." But that casual utterance was never formalized in any treaty or written agreement.
And Russia has never received even so much as a half-sentence or parenthetical remark to that effect.
In contrast, the Budapest Memorandum is a legal document signed by Russia, the U.S., and the United Kingdom - and Putin is clearly in total violation of it.
Your argument is thus quite specious, and - in fact - I suspect that you are not even arguing in good faith.
Regards,