What Russia does not want is its set borders close to NATO – which is precisely why they asked politely for guarantees and then were forced to attacked “NATO” in Ukraine – it was becoming full fledged NATO on Russia’s borders. Years of NATO build up and billions and billions of dollars being pumped into Ukraine  to build a huge army…

What Russia wants though (since the West acted the fool) is the Russian military stationed next to NATO. i.e., Poland, Romania, and EU etc. In a position to counter NATO’s military both in terms of ground threat and in terms of those Aegis Ashore installations. You counter missile threats by putting your air defenses as close to them as possible in order to intercept them in boost phase rather than terminal phase to minimize the issue of “stragglers”. And 250-400,000 Russian troops in western Ukraine will make it highly unlikely NATO will ever be able to threaten a ground invasion, a la Ukraine. And if they do, they have to,

1) Beat the Russian Military District there (Ukraine) first, and then,

2) Cross all of Ukraine to get to Russia.

and

3) Not gonna happen…

WtR