We don't quite see eye to eye here Dave, maybe because I get to see still a little media presenting the Russian side of things. We watched the Russian ambassador in UK today being interviewed by a pretty aggressive Al Jazeera reporter, the former managed to get across some of the misconceptions we have "In the West", about a few things, I am sure if you saw that, you would maybe feel a little differently. I know you are a reasonable guy, not short of intelligence. Truth is it is NATO that has been the aggressor in many places, the Russians saw this coming to their doorstep, in addition to the troubles already in Ukraine since 2014, that they had been complaining about the entire time, in vain, so they acted preemptively.
I have absolutely no doubt we would have done the same if it had been done to us in Northern Ireland, in fact we did, more than once, for a lot less reason, previously, but luckily no-one threw the nationalists a pile of money and weapons creating a full blown war.
Personally I think NATO is just bullshit business, a useless waste of planetary energy, and life. It was supposed to prevent war with Russia, but instead has actually created it. David Graeber defined bullshit jobs, look there and honestly ask if this isn't what it really is, just like big pharma actually works to perpetuate illness for profit, rather than just cure it, and the "Renewables" industry does the same, about fossil fuels use, creating things like carbon taxes, to keep business extracting as usual
We don't need that kind of business any longer, it seems to me.