Same here, I too seek out the motive behind actions; otherwise, history is the most boring and unintelligible sequence of events known to man.
I recommend you look into these authors/commentators/analysts:
* John Mearsheimer
* Noam Chomsky
* Vladimir Pozner
* Jeffrey Sachs
* Zbigniew Brezinski
* George Friedman
* Peter Zeihan
* Peter Hitchens
* Gonzalo Lira
* Tim Marshall
* Robert D Kaplan
* Jack F. Matlock Jr
* George Kennan
* Stephen Cohen
* Henry Kissinger
Indeed. NATO/EU expansion is essentially a slow-moving replay of Brest-Litovsk and Barbarossa from the Russian point-of-view. I'm an American but I totally understand why Russia just did what it did. Never forget that Lenin was sent to Russia BY GERMANY for the express purpose of destabilizing Russia during WW1. This is the type of destabilizing regime-change that Russia fears. Their fears are not unfounded if you pay close attention to what the US has done in Ukraine, which is something our media doesn't even cover.
This is just the tip of the iceberg:
* https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/congress-has-remo...
* https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/10/4/pandora-papers-ukra...
* https://www.occrp.org/en/the-pandora-papers/pandora-papers-r...
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsh9V8UxenI
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XK93aawlLKg