We're stuck between having to do timid actions and full NATO escalation. This feels like constant creep.
Unfortunately russia has the strength to rape & pillage through neighbors once in a while.
Russia has enemies because for centuries it has attacked its neighbours repeatedly.
And then imposed its own idea of peace that involves tanks rolling through Budapest and soldiers executing students and poets.
Tiananmen square shocked the world, but that kind of behaviour was already familiar to Eastern Europeans. It was the same old song, different orchestra.
Russia is not your friend, no matter what the propaganda tells you and your countrymen.
You’re just momentarily useful to a warlike mafia controlling a country.
To be fair, historically Russia has also been a target of attacks and invasions repeatedly. (Generally not by the same smaller neighbours it has been attacking, of course.)
That history has nothing to do with the present-day conflict, though, except that it might be a part of what gives some Russians a feeling of being threatened. And Soviet-style aggression is of course just imperialism by any other name.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circassian_genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chechen_genocide
The same can be said of the French, English and Germans, that only stop destroying themselves after they united to fight Russia (which ironically saved the first 2 against the last one otherwise they would not even exist as sovereign states anymore).
I think you're forgetting somebody important? Another country that was actually on the beaches in Normandy?