Look, I do live in the real world - Russia doesn't want Ukraine in NATO, meanwhile, America wants it (and has been wanting it for decades) to degrade Russia from a global to a regional power. One have to be a complete idiot to believe that Russia want infiltrate Ukraine - the same way America has, for example. By the way, the treatment of these people and purposely putting them on display harmed would have been reacted to differently if those were, let's say, Ukrainian spies caught in Russia.
Those countries want to be in the NATO because Putin has been threatening for many years/decades and is being a bully. That isn't Europe's fault, but Russia's.
NATO has been reluctant to accept Ukraine even, but Ukraine added it in their law that they want to join Europe/Nato. That isn't Europe or US their fault either. It's because of Russia threatening democracy in Ukraine ( once again).
Also, gas was found in Crimea which seems to be the main cause for Russia invading and taking Crimea immediately. The resource was so big, that it was possible to use that for European supply within a couple of years if Russia wouldn't have invaded.
If you look at the facts, a lot of Europe has actually bought more gas at premium prices.
This is reversing now, rightfully so. And NATO is now also increasing military spending, which they were cautious about before. Do you think that's also a "new threat" to Russia? It's full within their right after literally seeing Russia starting a war.
We shouldn't have increased buying Russian gas, so much is clear by now.
Outside of that. Russia is taking every opportunity to violate the Geneva convention and is actively shelling when civilians want to flee. That's just immoral. What Russia says and does are 2 different things.
If you read NATO's founding documents, a country can be accepted only if it would improves the alliances overall security, which is not the case with Ukraine and Georgia. Both countries would only improve the alliance's security if they stay neutral as buffer zones.
Ukraine has been shelling Donbas for 8 years and there's plenty of evidence, which has been totally ignored by the West.
On the contrary, there's little evidence (only narrative) that Russia shells evacuees.
There was no active discussion of bringing Ukraine into NATO. Also, wanting to be in NATO (a) is the right of a sovereign nation to decide and (b) does not make that nation Nazis. Putin asserts Ukraine is not sovereign and is full of Nazis as his primary reason for invading after spending months saying he had no intention of invading. So he is a liar at best, delusional at worst.
Russia agreed to the Budapest Memorandum recognizing Ukraine's sovereignty as an independent state. Russia is also a party to the U.N. Charter as a founding member, and the Geneva Conventions. Those have all been torn up by Putin. So I for one choose to not believe anything he says, and find him completely untrustworthy. Any promise he signs is worthless including one to not invade Ukraine, or any other country, if they agree to stay out of NATO. Staying out of NATO is not a security guarantee so long as Putin is the one in charge. He presented not a single complaint before the U.N. about Ukraine before invading, after promising he wouldn't.
And as Putin is making it increasingly clear the stability-instability paradox may be a real and true thing, we have to consider that avoiding nuclear war at all costs itself has a cost which is that of principles. The principle being, you don't fucking roll tanks into people's backyards in contravention of the U.N. charter. The whole goddamn reason that institution exists is to prevent wars exactly like this. That it hasn't prevented it makes me question the trap we're now in: nuclear weapons are being used as a shield to permit a country to commit worse atrocities with conventional weapons than had nuclear weapons not existed, and that begs escalation all the way to a nuclear event. There is now a much bigger gap between conventional war and mutually assured destruction.
We can't go back before Putin did this. The world cannot just glibly accept what's happened as a result of fear of nukes, allowing that to make us ignore our principles. And our principles are the U.N. charter - that's the best thing that most nations agree on most of the time. There isn't anything else. If we lose that, we have nothing, and then we are certain to repeat the mistakes of WW1 and WW2.
P.S. We all had to learn Russian when I was a student; I can't speak it smoothly, but I understand it perfectly.