Good historical analysis by the Globe and Mail.
A tale of four cities
'This story of four Eastern European capitals, all under attack from Russia, over the past 70 years makes nonsense of the claim that NATO expansion eastward caused this crisis. After this history, Eastern Europeans understood that if they didn't have a NATO security guarantee, they couldn't keep their democracy. The West didn't impose NATO upon Eastern Europeans: they demanded it and we would have been derelict not to have provided it.
Eastern Europeans have always understood that an authoritarian Russia, whoever rules it, has never tolerated a free state on its borders.
Mr. Putin's brutality has a pedigree. He mirrors the brutality of the czars toward the Poles in the 19th century and the brutality of Joseph Stalin toward his empire's national minorities. Like his predecessors, Mr. Putin crushes his foes at home and abroad. Blaming it all on his demonic, even demented personality misses the deep historical continuity in the use of Russian power within and beyond its frontiers.'
theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-michael-ignatieff-on-war-in-ukraine/