This isn't the reason, although most of what it says about Putin is true. John Mearsheimer identified the real reason back in 2014, and it's the same reason the U.S. brought the world to the brink of nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis, and the same reason the U.S. would never permit Mexico, for example, to join a military alliance with China or Russia. As Mearsheimer writes:
Putin’s actions should be easy to comprehend. A huge expanse of land that Napoleonic France, imperial Germany, and Nazi Germany all crossed to strike at Russia itself, Ukraine serves as a buffer state of enormous strategic importance to Russia. No Russian leader would tolerate a military alliance that was Moscow’s mortal enemy until recently moving into Ukraine. Nor would any Russian leader stand idly by while the West helped install a government there that was determined to integrate Ukraine into the West.
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