Without any authority, I would say that from a Russian perspective, they weren’t there ‘yet’. Russia doesn’t want Ukraine to be the staging ground for an invasion.

I am sure I am not telling you something entirely new. There have been enough wars in recent times that it is not entirely unjustified for a country with many resources to assume that it is a target.

The problem in seeing the Russian perspective is that it feels a bit dirty to realize that we can reasonably be perceived as a threat.