I post separately because your post had not appeared before posting my first one:
I agree with you on the bolded part, since the biggest issue for Russia is the expansion of NATO, which should be extremely clear for anybody who has watched the news. Their aim is to protect their own country, not to strip weapons from their neighbours, since their neighbours are free to spend on military affairs as much as they want, they just don't want USA to be involved with their nuclear weaponry.
The west is violating UN laws by militarily aiding participant of the war, Ukraine, which prolongs the war that the west and Ukraine were unwilling to avoid for years by not offering something concrete for Russia as a deal.
Virtue signaling is somehow a thing now perhaps to simply save face, which I don't exactly understand outside of humanitarian aid, but even then one shouldn't feel the need to strongly signal his virtuous behavior - any good you do in any situation will be repaid by God himself, that's for sure.
To make matters little more complicated, this war is still not only about NATO, it's also about gas that locates in Ukraine, so money is after all the culprit here, but I still believe this conflict was avoidable for years if the west would have played things differently, for example by listening to countries like France and Germany.
...
WW2 started partly because of sanctioning Germany too harshly in my opinion, the scale is just debatable.
EDIT. grammar