Many countries to choose from? Those are their own countries and they fear the threat of Russia and seek peace and stability.
Castro and Russia united to export trouble to areas that are relatively stable, to destabilize and bring war to places that didn’t and don’t have it.
To try to be clearer…
Russia is conducting naval exercises on our back door step.
We are conducting military training on their border.
NATO could have conducted these exercises in Femrance or Germany or any of the other NATO member countries. They chose to conduct them almost in Russia.
Russia is now doing something similar.
Perfectly reasonable response.