How funny that the USA tells Russia that a NATO-member Ukraine on their border would not be a threat to them yet if Russia has military in Venezuela the USA considers that a red line:
https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/white-house/article257290222.html
The USA can enforce red lines all over the world, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Monroe Doctrine. Russia can’t have a red line on its border, 300 miles from Moscow. We brutally imposed our will on Vietnam for a decade in order to try to stop the first domino from falling 10,000 miles away. Russia is fighting like hell to prevent the last domino from falling.
And China with the Solomon Islands.
The two countries signed a security pact.
Sounds like the reasons of liberals, as it is utterly ignores that Venezuela has no need of Russian aid to protect it from the US - which country saved them from speaking German or Russian - while the reason for NATO is that Russia has been a military threat to former countries it once ruled, and those it would if it could. But maybe you want to defend Stalin and successors.
NATO countries like the map they have now better than an older one.
https://countrymapss.blogspot.com/2014/01/nato-countries-map-1949.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_occupations_by_the_Soviet_Union
Russia has a history of repeated invasions of other countries as well as military assistance against the West, and not in order to liberate and rebuild them as with the US. Thus NATO is warranted, and Putin - who longs for Soviet glory - has simply provided more evidence as to why, while insolently playing victim.
Countries invaded [including interventions or military assistance like Vietnam] by Soviet Russia, the Soviet Union, and the Russian Federation
Estonia 1917
Latvia 1918
Lithuania 1918
Finland 1918
Poland 1918
Belarus 1918
Ukraine 1918
Georgia 1920
Azerbaijan 1920
Armenia 1920
Moldova 1918
Central Asia 1918
Mongolia 1921
Georgia 1924
Estonia 1924
Afghanistan 1929
China 1929
Japan 1938
Poland 1939
Finland 1939
Estonia 1940
Latvia 1940
Lithuania 1940
Romania 1940
Iran 1942 (Joint Soviet-British invasion)
Ukraine and Belarus 1944
Bulgaria 1944
Hungary 1944
Yugoslavia 1944
Albania 1944
Poland 1944
The Baltic States 1944
Germany 1944 [with the West]
Tuva 1944
Japan 1945
China 1945
Korea 1950
East Germany 1953
Hungary 1956
Vietnam 1960
Czechoslovakia 1968
China 1969
Israel 1969
Ethiopia 1974
Angola 1975
Afghanistan 1979 Georgia 1989
Baltic States 1990
Georgia 1991
Azerbaijan 1991
Moldova 1992
Tajikistan 1992 Northern Caucasus 1992 [Chechnya, etc.]
War of Dagestan 1999 Second Chechen War 1999–2009
Georgia 2008
Insurgency in the North Caucasus 2009–2017
Ukraine 2014
Syria 2015
Central African Republic Civil War 2018–present
Ukraine 2022
Sources: https://www.numbers-stations.com/articles/soviet-and-russian-invasions-since-1917/; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Russia