>>I am amazed that intelligent people in Europe and America have been brainwashed into thinking that "if unchecked, Russia will annex country after country until it reaches the Atlantic."

Not so much 'until it reaches the Atlantic' but 'until it recaptures all the bits that used to be part of the USSR - or at least to defensible geographic borders. The notion that it could beat say, France, or Sweden (or France and Sweden together, never mind NATO as a whole) is laughable.

But to expand out to those borders it'd have to invade a country already part of NATO and it's been clear that they'd fail so badly that they'd see it as an existential threat - and have no choice but to use nukes.

We'll just have to agree to disagree on what Putin is up to.