You're repeating a tired lie, my friend. Putin's invasion had nothing to do with "NATO expansion" anymore than it had to do with the "war on terror," Afghanistan, or any other examples of "whataboutism" Putin likes to cite.

Putin himself has been admitting with greater and greater frequency what he really believes - that the collapse of the USSR and the breakaway of its former satellites - like Ukraine and Belarus - were "disasters" which he intends to rectify.

He's even admitted that he wants to restore the empire of Peter the Great and said even before 2014 that southern Ukraine should be returned to Russia as "Novorossiya." When his puppet Yanukovych's regime fell, he immediately seized control of it.

After nine years of funding breakaway wars in eastern Ukraine, he finally decided to invade. He thought it would be a cakewalk and wanted to restore a puppet regime, but that failed miserably. And so he dropped the pretense about "de-Nazification" and NATO and has since admitted it's about restoring the old empire.

Speaking of NATO, were you aware that it created the NATO-Russia Council (NRC) in 2002 in order to ensure Russia had a direct line of contact so negotiations could be conducted and maintained. 2004 was also the last year any members in Russia's orbit were added.

And the NRC oversaw multiple agreements between the two sides, right on up to 2014. That's when it ended and it hasn't been reassembled since. I'll give you one guess as to why.