In the last century, Europe (and Germany in particular) nearly destroyed Russia.

Russia entered WW1 on the same spaghetti-treaty-basis as every other nation that entered the conflict of their "own" accord.

The USSR entered WW2 as a German ally and tried to once again erase Poland and the Poles as the common German/Russian imperialist ambition required. And instead of preparing for the inevitable war that literally everyone but Stalin saw coming, the Soviets collectivly spent the mid-to-late 1930s partaking in the Great Terror, nearly destroying their own nation for the sake of satiating a madman's ego and paranoia.

If you’re Putin, and you continue to see a military alliance year after year, encroaching further and further up to your borders, what the hell are you supposed to do?

....stop promoting chauvanism? Stop trying to revive the USSR against the will of those who willingly left? Stop invading your neighbours? There's like a million different ways to remain as a anti-democratic leech-state in this world without needing to use military force.

If the USSR expanded the Warsaw Pact right up to incorporate Mexico and Canada, what do you reasonably think our response would be?

It's nice you think the US can just arbitarily expand NATO without the consent of other members, that joining NATO isn't a choice. Likewise, it's nice you apparently don't get it was the same for the Warsaw Pact - Mongolia wasn't allowed in on it as European Communists opposed having to support potential conglict between the USSR and China.

Just look at Russia’s military defense budget. If you think is a country preparing and readying itself for any dream of imperialistic aspirations, you are crazy.

They've invaded two former members of the USSR, have active orders to invade a third if the oppurtunity arises, and have drawn up plans for invading a fourth-one. Sorry, but I'll rather accept the apparent reality that Russis is a myopic yes-man state that is currently doing war and committing genocide against Ukrainians.