> NATO clearly justifies its existence largely as an anti-Russia organization as it denied entertaining the idea of Russia as a member
False. Russia was on a track toward membership, with some additional special treatment, but then Putin demanded immediate membership without readiness criteria ahead of any other former Warsaw Pact countries, NATO balked at that demand, and Russia abandoned its pursuit of membership and became antagonistic to the expansion process it had previously been part of.
> I'm going to stop responding to this thread now, as it really is a huge tangent from the original "disinformation" topic.
Disinformation was never the topic (though you keep repeating Russian disinformation), this whole discussion about Ukraine/Russia/NATO history was in response to your separate claims in the same post as the disinformation ones about justification of the war.
I was referring to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37447928 which was clearly about "disinformation", and how one must actually debate the merits of the subject, instead of doing alignment tests. Obviously that means I have to debate the substance of the issue, but at this point, I think I've done enough to show that there is room for debate (you attacked one plank of my argument, even if I were to concede that point, it would not be a critical blow), i.e., this thread is a kind of existence proof for abandoning alignment tests. Ironically, you are now disputing all of that and tarring me with an alignment brush. I consider my point made, regardless.
False. Russia was on a track toward membership, with some additional special treatment, but then Putin demanded immediate membership without readiness criteria ahead of any other former Warsaw Pact countries, NATO balked at that demand, and Russia abandoned its pursuit of membership and became antagonistic to the expansion process it had previously been part of.
> I'm going to stop responding to this thread now, as it really is a huge tangent from the original "disinformation" topic.
Disinformation was never the topic (though you keep repeating Russian disinformation), this whole discussion about Ukraine/Russia/NATO history was in response to your separate claims in the same post as the disinformation ones about justification of the war.