I guess it depends on who you ask.

I recently read the memoirs of the man who was the Russian minister of foreign affairs 1990-1996. He certainly did not view NATO as an enemy. Already in 1992, he foresaw that all of Europe would eventually join the EU and NATO, because their core values would sooner or later lead to accepting new democracies as they matured. He expected that Russia would join those organizations too, but before that could happen, his fraction unfortunately lost the domestic political struggle to the old guard who wanted to maintain Russia as their personal fortress, and turned domestic anti-western brainwashing up to 11 before anyone in the west even lifted a finger at them.

He concluded despite some diplomatic mistakes that were made, the west was on the right side of history by working with new democracies and has been successful in ensuring peace and prosperity through cooperation with their new partners. Russia, which returned to Soviet-era antagonism, failed.

He hopes that one day, Russian people will be able to follow other European nations in finding their national interest in democratic reforms and cooperation with western institutions.

He wrote the book a little before the full-scale invasion. The war has made him less poetic and more direct. He does not think very highly of people who buy the Russian narrative about NATO threat. He now calls them "chumps" and "useful idiots" who help to cement the little fortress where Putin and his KGB buddies can freely loot Russian people with impunity. And now, unfortunately, the insatiable greed has spilled over to Ukraine too.

Very true, doesn't take more than a glance to see how much more prosperous former east bloc influenced states became once they broke towards the West. Certainly would have been interesting to see a future where Russia and NATO played nice and Russia ended up joining, and cultural relations were strengthened between both sides.

>He does not think very highly of people who buy the Russian narrative about NATO threat.

Unfortunately, I think this is just something that's part of human nature and will never truly go away. Humans generally tend to perceive others meddling in their affairs, with or without good reason or intentions as a threat- there are not many (if any?) countries large enough to exert both political influence and physical force on the world stage that would also at the same time tolerate a perceived enemy or human "other" to exert any kind of influence on their own neighbors and sphere of control.

When world leaders become delusional, a word he uses to describe Putin, should others enable that? When a world leader starts to think that, for example, that all Jews in the world are his enemies who must be exterminated, should rest of the world retreat and hope for the best?

People like Merkel noticed in 2014 the latest that Putin was sharing nonsense theories about race, gays and supremacy of Russian culture in personal conversations. They choose to ignore and tiptoe around it. Instead of peace, we got war in 2014. Obama refused to send lethal aid, others didn't do much more for Ukraine. We hoped to somehow improve relations. Instead, we got even larger war.

On the eve of the full-scale invasion, Putin demanded further 100 million people in Europe to be left for him to chew.

More than half a million people on all sides have died since then in Ukraine, with no end in sight. Where are our red lines?

That minister of foreign affairs, he thinks that any acceptable lines were crossed a long time ago, draws parallels with notable dictators of the 20th century, and advocates that it is better for everyone, including Russia, if Putinism was decisively defeated like Nazism in its day.