>Who would have ever thought that pushing a cold-war coalition eastwards towards an ex-superpower, including shoving it in its very borders, which it has long d

>Who would have ever thought that pushing a cold-war coalition eastwards towards an ex-superpower, including shoving it in its very borders, which it has long declared a "red line", would ever cause an invasion? This is weird thing with anyone saying "NATO FAULT NATO FAULT", NATO explicitly DIDN'T want the eastern European countries to join, it was the eastern Europeans who begged and begged to be let in, including Ukraine and the west rejected them. And even IF this was the case somehow that NATO pushed themselves into these countries: 1. Why did Russia give the thumbs up for these countries to join? 2. Why did Russia try and attempt to join NATO at one point All of this by the way happened with Putin in charge, so unless we all believe in the dead-putin theory something doesn't add up here with the framing of "NATO FAULT". >It's not like everybody from real-politic scholars to the most experienced of foreign affairs like Kissinger explicitly said it was a bad idea, and that this will be the result! So you're saying that real-politik experts believe if Ukraine had joined back in say 2008 they today would've been invaded by Russia? Since it's in 2022 not 2008 they got full-blown invasion after having having been trying to be neutral and DESPITE that Russia still kept meddling in their affairs as if it was Belarus, leading up to 2014 crisis. I would love to know how exactly Russia would be able to pull that off against the full NATO military force.