Don’t you understand that when Putin completes the takeover of Ukraine, then his border moves west to the Western border of Ukraine, where he will again complain about NATO on his border? History keeps repeating itself, yet people insist this time it will be different...
There’s a lot of speculation about what Putin really wants from this.
I think he knows, or I hope he does, that a full-blown occupation of Ukraine would be too costly, and that merely getting the guarantee of no NATO troops in Ukraine, would at least satisfy people back home. From a political standpoint, any Russian leader that allowed NATO troops to be up on the Ukrainian/Russian border, would not be in power for very long.