It's not about NATO as much as it's Putin's wet dream to restore the Russian Empire. This isn't even something new: if you, and many others who talk about "understanding Russia" (btw, there is a term for it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putinversteher) were paying attention in the past 20 years - just like most of Eastern European and Baltic countries did - you would understand why this argument is funny. Actually, it's not funny - it's becoming increasingly annoying to hear it repeated. And it's not a surprise it mostly comes from pro-Russian countries like Serbia, Hungary, and India.
This is just annoying "Gaslighting" and nothing more. Geopolitics is way more complex than such simplistic viewpoints. Here is one of my previous comments with links to some enlightening reading material: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30559136#30565003
There are a lot of countries particularly in Africa, Middle East and Asia who have gone on record saying they understand the Russian pov without condoning it. Everybody knew something bad was going to happen if NATO and Russia kept up their tit-for-tats with the 2014 Crimean annexation being the biggest red flag in the sequence of events. NATO/US/EU are fully to blame as much as Russia for the current suffering of the Ukrainians (and the Russians).
