I would direct you to George Kennan[1] and his 1997 NYT article where he said, among other things:

"... expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era. Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking ..."

Is it your position that he was paid for, or in some way disingenuously held, this view ?

I don't have strong opinions on this topic but I note with interest that there seem to be contrary viewpoints that aren't not puppets/trolls.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_F._Kennan

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wredcoll 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Did I miss the news of ukraine joining nato or something?

More to the point, this is some hardcore "she was asking for it" victim blaming.

You know who started the war? THE COUNTRY THAT LAUNCHED THE INVASION.

	▲	user3939382 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		You missed the news where our own state dept officials are on leaked calls hand selecting the anti Russian government of Ukraine weeks before their coup or the news where Merkel admitted we negotiated treaties with Russia over Ukraine in bad faith. The war started with our expansion of NATO, followed by couping Ukraines govt, multiple fake peace treaties, and finally Ukraine murdering thousands of culturally Russian civilians in Eastern Ukraine. I count a war as started when someone starts murdering people w the military not when someone walks over a border. Although your narrative doesn’t work then right?