This opinion piece by Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, eloquently outlines what I think has been the biggest single blunder of the West, in its relationship with Russia, since the end of the First Cold War in 1989: the expansion of NATO to the doorstep of Russia.

This expansion championed by the Clinton administration in the late 1990s, tweaked a long held, and after the Nazi invasion of 1941 which resulted in 20 million Soviet deaths, an easily understood paranoia of Russians to perceived encroachment from the West.

That, despite protest from Moscow, the USA and Europe pushed NATO into former Soviet and Warsaw Pact states bordering Russia, was an act of hubris that is now reaping the blowback that everyone should have expected.

This is not to excuse Putin, who owns his own despicable place in history, but it has provided him with an all too Trumpian looking nationalist fig leaf to justify his tantrum smackdown of Ukraine, for daring to want to leave his putrid umbrella of influence.

ps. In light of Putin’s own fascistic behavior at home and in invading Ukraine, it’s ironic that he claims to be doing it to ‘deNazify’ Ukraine; which unlike Russia, at least has the seeds of a democratic future…

[This New York Times article is gifted via my subscription and is freely available]
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/21/opinion/putin-ukraine-nato.html?unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuomT1JKd6J17Vw1cRCfTTMQmqxCdw_PIxftm3iWka3DPDmwbiOMNAo6B_EGKfbd_Zt12wjeBTd5HPfopTeB1iO9DOkgnAy-Znqy5orVXaSMktdD0GWosw5PGWb1_-jWyZDXnI706nefhtFfba2m6RPfZ0nc-IAYy9MBudVqr3CEO1b6FRrAuoqR23_crBZl6RTYSNmLd77SzVUIIaJjRZQrc6wI2R-hYRTjQ-NeZ4LoGewhTYknUGDI9uS1vrYMBZ65Eefr3PBUie8HhgL8OCGQOLYmhB5A5QoK8hKz8l6WU1jVngbnQC4SvpOa6&smid=url-share