If that seems unrealistic, some would argue that the same was true of Russian missiles in Cuba.
Did you read that article?
“Pavel Felgenhauer, an independent defense analyst in Moscow, says some Russian military leaders fear the U.S. missile defense system planned for installation in Poland and the Czech Republic is really intended to deploy nuclear-armed missiles.”
The article points out that (Russia knew this!) the perceived threat was from the IRANIAN direction not from itself.
And yet it feared a first strike from countries that weren’t even at war with it.
“There was a well-publicized but unpublished letter from Obama to Medvedev which apparently touched on missile defense but indicated that the United States would be willing to slow down the deployment in Poland and the Czech Republic if there were signs that Iran had agreed to halt its nuclear program.”
So Russia knew for a cast iron fact nobody was even pointing the defence measures in their direction.
But even though they knew this, they still were obsessed with the idea that this was a smokescreen to give the USA via the ex-Warsaw Pact countries a first strike capability.
Why? Because that’s what they’d have done themselves.
Because they’re stark raving mad. And you can’t legislate for madness.
Russia’s leadership was way more paranoid in 2008 than they were in the early 80s, and way angrier too. At least in the early 80s Russia had an excuse - the Cold War was still on. In 2008, there’d been a clear fifteen years of nobody in NATO pointing even so much as a rifle let alone a nuke in the general direction of Muscovy.
Again, nonsense. Your answer is actually found in your comment itself: Missile DEFENSE (i.e., a defense AGAINST a missile attack) is the opposite of OFFENSIVE nuclear missiles, which is what the USSR was installing in Cuba. Defending against a threat provides the chance for survival; while not defending against a threat is surrendering to one’s adversary the decision as to one’s survival.