And what was there to fear? The strongest economic powers in Europe were in the process of letting their militaries atrophy into almost nothing. No honest person with half a brain thought that NATO was getting ready to invade Russia. Furthermore, as everybody including Putin knows, Russia's nuclear arsenal meant that NATO would never invade Russia anyway.
The highly predictable truth was that it was only Russia's invasion of Ukraine that reinvigorated NATO. Putin was willing to risk that not because of some bogus fear of NATO, but because he wanted to grab Ukrainian territory and knew that he would lose his chance to do so if Ukraine joined NATO.
The level of dishonesty of those here who argue the opposite is staggering. Or I suppose just plain stupidity is always a possibility as well.
Proof that Russia doesn’t fear NATO invading them is of course the collapse of their empire with no invasion but today it is the indifference to defenses they maintain against NATO, they want Ukraine and anything they need from other supposedly defensive areas threatened by NATO being on that border, they casually pull it out and send it to Ukraine invasion forces without a care in the world that they are leaving that NATO border area weak and only symbolically manned and equipped.
Ha
The crap you post, and the screen name you chose, and you call someone else stupid. What a joke.
“Russia attacked Ukraine because of NATO expansion” is a pathetic joke of an argument.”
You’re right for the wrong reason. This is just another one of those stupid, bloody ethnic border wars the Europeans have been having for centuries. The Russians not looking to rebuild the Soviet Union, else they would never have let it break up in 1991. That argument is bogus.