Myths and realities of putinism and NATO expansion

The Russia-Ukraine war that dramatically escalated on February 24, 2022, with Putin's decision to launch a full-scale invasion, changed the political, moral, and academic environment for the discussion about NATO's role in Europe and the story of its post-1991 expansion to the East. In the chorus of indignation and condemnation of the Russian invasion, it became near-impossible to speak and write about the causes and consequences of the NATO expansion in a balanced, dispassionate way. Suddenly we have a war-driven consensus that NATO had nothing to do with the origins of the war in Eastern Europe.