[implements]

> So what happened? NATO reneged by gobbling up Eastern European countries and pushing ever closer to Russia’s border. Russia sees NATO encroaching closer and closer to their border, flirting with allowing membership of a country in Russia’s border. What were they going to do?

Nothing. NATO isn’t something akin to the Soviet Union - a collection of client states politically and militarily dominated by a single country styling itself an expanding imperial power - it’s a simple mutual defence pact.

It’s reasonable for Russia to object to theatre range nuclear missiles and specific military systems on its borders, and that’s the sort of thing treaties between NATO and Russia should cover - but it’s entirely unreasonable for Russia to argue that Ukraine should not have the capacity to defend its borders from invasion, that this from NATO membership constitutes an intolerable military threat - it simply doesn’t, nor in the modern era are countries allowed to dictate neutrality to their neighbours as a condition of their own security.