> People have been pointing out that NATO expansion was raising tension with Russia since the fall of the USSR. NATO does not expand on its own like a dough le

> People have been pointing out that NATO expansion was raising tension with Russia since the fall of the USSR. NATO does not expand on its own like a dough left on a windowsill. My country is in NATO because we were scared stiff when we saw the methods Russia used in the First Chechen War in 1994. Nothing had changed since Russia invaded us during the WWII. As an insurance and deterrent against that happening to us again, we made a decision to build relations with other European nations to ensure tight cooperation and remove as many obstacles as possible for coming to mutual aid, hoping that even the possibility of receiving aid through organizations like NATO would make a Russian invasion less likely. This is "raising tensions" only because Russia intends to invade us as soon as they can, and us being in NATO makes that more costly and risky for them, because they can't be sure where the aid ends - might go as far as American nukes flying. > What they've been doing makes a lot of sense through the lens of a group of people panicking as NATO keeps tightening the noose on them. Nobody in Russia is panicking. The narrative about NATO tightening a noose is an artificial talking point thrown to western useful idiots for self-flagellation to undermine the support of Ukraine. It is not a topic of discussion in Russian political and military circles. Instead, they talk about reclaiming their lost prestige and taking back what "belongs to them". For Russians of Putin's generation, the domination over Central and Eastern Europe was normalcy and they want it back.