Yeah it's such a bullshit narrative, it drives me insane that people make some kind of false equivalence between a country voluntarily choosing it's own alliances vs invasion as well.

Also, it just.... doesn't make sense to me. If you don't want your neighbours to join an alliance, maybe you need to offer a better deal? But no, instead you invade one of your neighbours, turning the whole region against you and acting as the catalyst for more countries rushing to join NATO.

You have to assume either that whole line of reasoning is bullshit and/or Russia is laughably incompetent.

Maybe there's some angle I'm not seeing, I definitely have my own biases but this whole argument just stinks to me.