Anyway, Putin has a large number of awful views and the way he runs Russia is objectively just a lot worse than the entire time it was a Soviet republic.
You know what, it's about 200 pages too late, but I'll take it.
Your refusal to accept that NATO enlargement is a massive provocation given that NATO is de facto a tool of US imperialism and the US and its cronies have been involved in an egregious amount of military and other kinds of aggression all around the world, all of which correctly alarms that world, is not a good reason for you to think that those who disagree with you love Russian nationalism or whatever other bullshit you want to invent.
How is NATO an effective tool of US Imperialism? How does it give the US any more power than it already had?
You know, the member states of NATO can leave. They can leave at any time. There's a clause in the treaty specifically allowing them to do so. That's not how an empire works.
If I had to summarize the geopolitical position of NATO, it would not be US Imperialism, it would be the status quo. NATO is a group of countries who have decided that they all benefit from the current geopolitical situation, and don't want their position within the current world order to be upset by other countries wanting to change things. It's not a tool of US Imperialism and it doesn't need to be. The status quo disproportionately works in the interests of the US, and thus the US has an enormous interest in preserving the status quo, as it turns out do many, many other countries.
NATO expansion is the entire point of the organization, indeed it's kind of the point of all defence alliances. The point is to amass such a concentration of military force that noone will risk attacking any member of that alliance, and thus the status quo is preserved. The more countries join NATO, the stronger that collective military force becomes and the more effective the deterrent becomes.
If you want to know why NATO expansion is a thing, just ask an incredibly easy question. If Ukraine had joined NATO earlier, would any of this have happened? The answer is no. If the choice you are given is "commit to never joining this defence alliance or we will invade you", then the rational response is not to agree and to accept that you can be coerced into doing whatever said foreign government wants by the threat of military reprisals because that is a renunciation of sovereignty. The rational response is to join the defense alliance and no longer be susceptible to that kind of coercion, because even if you benefit less than someone else, you still benefit.
I'm not pro-NATO by any stretch of the imagination. Frankly, I think it's kind of weird to be partisan about defense alliances, since they're essentially just alliances of convenience. But sure, for those of us who have problems with the status quo I can see how there might be some degree of political antipathy towards an organization whose function is preserving the status quo. But here's another question. What's the alternative? Without NATO, how do countries like Ukraine and the Baltic states protect their independence? How do they resist military coercion or actual, old school Imperialism? How do we avoid a geopolitical order in which the strong prey on the weak with impunity? What force prevents that from happening?
Most of the countries that ban cluster munitions are the same ones that also ban the use of landmines and for the exact same reasons... and to the best of my knowledge the USA, Ukraine and Russia aren't signatories to either agreement banning those weapons.
There's a distinction between anti-personnel and anti-tank mines. Ukraine, for example, has stockpiles of anti-personnel mines but officially denies and has legally committed to not using thems. Anti-tank mines are less of a problem in international law because they're much less hazardous to civilians. They're still potentially dangerous, and someone could still drive a tractor over one and get killed that way, but any warzone is going to have some unexploded munitions which have to be cleared. The problem is that said clearing has to be done by people, and anti-personnel mines and cluster submunitions are particularly hazardous to people.
