It’s an aspect I had not considered – “I don’t want a hostile military alliance coming right up to my country’s border” cuts both ways.
Its been Putin’s argument for invading Ukraine, except Ukraine wasn’t hostile militarily to Russia until Russia started seizing Ukrainian land in Crimea, Luhansk, and Donetsk.
Ukraine was fine turning its back on Russia and embracing the rest of Europe economically, not militarily. Russia was NOT fine with that and started invading.
Yeah. You can actually look at the timeline, and there was an extensive debate inside Ukraine about whether or not they should make any kind of attempt at NATO, with the “not” side being initially pretty strong, and for pretty much exactly the reason you’d expect. And then, every time Russia did some unprovoked horrifying military aggression nearby or directly to them, the eagerness for NATO within Ukraine got a lot greater, until at this point, they and the West are both firmly in favor of it once things stabilize to a non-WW3 level of safety to do that.
The whole “Russia responded after the West tried to get Ukraine into NATO, which Ukraine had no independent desire for” thing is backwards in two whole separate different ways.
