I`m with both points. On the one side
@Kiss_of_the_Dragon is right, we, the west, have f*cked up to help Russia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Between the chechnya wars, collapse of the soviet structures and the rise of criminality, we had a former superpower that had been looking for their place in the world. And what did we do, not really much, actually one would have to make a study about this
, but so what. We have sunk billions into this sh*thole Afghanistan, not to imagine what one could have done with this money in Russia, to make the transformation from communism to democracy easier. Well, at the end, the Russians have nevertheless decided democratically and indeed for a strong man, Putin.
What is quite understandable, considering how this decade had worked out for them, and that they could not really begin much with democracy from their point of view.
On the other side
@Hamartia Antidote is right, too. We are talking here about sovereign countries, even the small Latvia, they can do whatever they want and obviously made the western way of life much more attractive to them than the Russian ones. You don`t even have to see a conspiracy under which they were actively sued, only that they liked the direction west more than the direction east. We should not forget here, that we are not speaking of natural allies, but of states which were cashed by the Soviet Union, at this time also not necessarily the nicest store in the world, after the Second World War.
But guys, ultimately it is up to Russia to decide where the danger lies for the country. I`m only personally amused how a potential NATO invasion is boosted ... with what?