Yeah but the other countries were already added, so the pressure for Russia was building up. So I don't understand why it would be an unexpected action of Russia.

The problem isn’t that it’s unexpected. It’s still unjustified. China taking over Taiwan wouldn’t be very surprising either, does that make it ok?

Yeah but we could have prevented it, so that means we wanted to so badly expand NATO that we would go into war with Russia for it? Why can't we stay put and maybe try to talk more? And now that we have an opportunity to talk or make a deal, and we blow it off as being in bed with Putin?

Because we don’t want to be told who to voluntarily take into our alliance by an opponent? Are you going to give china everything they ask for next because they take Taiwan if you don’t?

But NATO first agreed not to expand to countries along Russia's border, because they see that as a threat. But then NATO did anyway. So it's not like we're being told by Russia what to do, we made an agreement.

And Russia is also a superpower, and we don't want to be in conflict with them. So yeah it's not that everything they say we should abide to, but we should also not think that we can do everything without upsetting them.

NATO didn’t agree to not expand, some ministers of some member countries verbally said that NATO wouldn’t expand. It’s not like there was a treaty that was signed and then ignored.

Well I guess that for Russia it doesn't really matter if the agreement was official. They still feel threatened by it, and they have been saying that, and NATO still went on.

Ok, so then it’s fine? I know what happened, we were discussing if it’s acceptable though.

Then what is fine? To expand NATO? Maybe it's not fine if it causes WW3

I was asking if Russia invading Ukraine is fine, because it was expected.

Yeah no I'm not saying that that is necessary ok, but that we should consider making a deal with Russia instead of just continuing the war.

No, Ukraine joining goes back at least to 2008 and George W. Bush's overconfidence. Russian aggression started in 2014.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Bucharest_summit

Note that Georgia joining was also on the table. Several months after this summit Russia trounced Georgia in a few days and since then there has been no serious movement towards joining NATO.

Russia likely expected the same outcome in Ukraine but as we know now that didn't materialize.

Well, already in April 2008 Ukraine got a pledge in Bucharest that they "will become" a member of NATO, which is before the mess in Crimea and Donbass and even before Georgia got smacked which are the usual examples of Russian early aggression.

There's also Putin's 2007 speech in Munich about them being really pissed with how they are treated, does that count? Other than that there's the second Chechen war and maybe the time the Russians rushed some peace keepers into Kosoy.