If you consider how specific you are about word choices over actions, you are repeating the western narrative verbatim. And this take showcases the fundamental

If you consider how specific you are about word choices over actions, you are repeating the western narrative verbatim. And this take showcases the fundamental problem with giving a fuck about major narratives, and our perceived overlap with or opposition to them. As in: "Oh gosh, in taking position X, it looks like I'm overlapping with the received narrative, which happens to roughly include position X. Which is Bad, because that narrative is on the whole Bad. Therefore I should check myself and start importing positions from, or expressing empathy with narratives from the supposedly opposite direction. Because the enemy of my enemy can't be such a bad guy, once you get to know him", or something like that. Which seems to be what drives about 90 percent of the "If you just listen to Putin, it turns out he actually has a point with Ukraine" take. (Along with an uncritical acceptance of the web of factual distortions about what actually did happen). When it happened, the russian people responded differently than they did in a much more idealistic period. Except it wasn't "the Russian people" responding back then. And it certainly isn't "the Russian people" who decided to launch the current invasion. One nation state can annoy another into an economic collapse thus destroying it. Okay I guess, and evidently you're alluding to the 90s shock therapy advice given to Russia and associated shenanigans. Fine enough, but that wasn't "NATO". And it's when one starts boldly and utterly conflating the two (I'm guessing on the principle that they're both "The West") where things start to get loopy. Everything thing you say ignores what the Russians have been saying about NATO expansionism, and I think that is more key to understanding both sides of the issue. That's the thing -- we don't get to hear from "the Russians" as a people in any meaningful sense these days. By and large, we only get to hear what its current regime says (and the various statements it pretends to believe). Which has some relation to what Russians as a people think, but is at best a highly distorted and manipulated representation of what they think. I only suggested that actions of NATO contributed to the "irritation" that drug Russia into conflict. Your words said a lot more than that, I'm afraid. Let's replay the tape: This lines up with what Russia says. "We do not want a military alliance that was built to destroy us expanding to our border." It's extremely difficult to read this other than as conveying: (1) You do think this is what "Russia" (meaning its people) thinks, (2) That it's a reasonable position we should have empathy with and extend credibility to, (3) including, implicitly but unavoidably the "NATO was built to destroy Russia" part. Instead of treating it as the obvious hogwash that it is, that no reasonably sane and informed person would ever believe.