Very well put Tobias. I was lucky enough to go into Poland soon after the Soviet Union collapsed as it was obvious that the Poles just wanted to get as far away from the Russians as they could, as quickly as possible. I don't think there is really any love lost for the Russians in any of the former Warsaw Pact and Soviet Union territories that ended up as separate countries.

Of course there is lots of blame for all concerned, including in the US and NATO. But at the end of the day NATO was never going to roll across the Russian border one day, and so outside of Putin and other Russians' paranoia, any threat was not real. But really Putin is longing for the perceived glory days of the past, and willing to pay any price to have it. I don't think this will end well unless there are NATO troops in the Ukraine. There is no way that it can be allowed that he withdraws from some of the Ukraine but maintains control of Donbas (+) and the Crimea, as this may actually have been the limits of his real desires all along, we can't know.