Yes, yes... I get that it's an "entangling alliance". I love TJ, and he said "Peace, commerce, honest friendship with all nations … entangling alliances with none" in defense of the Washington doctrine of unstable alliances. I get that it was formed in response to the USSR and it's original reason for existing no longer exists. I get that its' very existence is seen as a threat by Putin.
But it is a defensive alliance. That phrase isn't just western propaganda. What do I mean by that? No matter how many European countries join or how close they are to Russia's border, they're not going to be used as a launching pad for an unprovoked, offensive war against a nuclear armed Russia, and Putin knows this. By contrast, this past month alone has proved that eastern European countries do have to worry about being invaded by Russia if they're not NATO members.
I've seen the argument that eastward expansion towards Russia and Russia's reaction is akin to the Cuban missile crisis, and no country wants a competitor nation's missiles on its doorstep. But eastward expansion of NATO isn't a direct threat to the Russian homeland. It's a threat to Russian influence. And even if every European nation not named Russia or Belarus was a full NATO member, it's not like Russia wouldn't still have significant influence there as long as they've got the natural gas. They just couldn't do direct European territorial expansion through military invasion without first convincing countries to leave NATO, at least without initiating WW3 which they don't want either.
"The US does bad things too" doesn't make Putin right. "Russia doesn't like the existence of NATO" doesn't mean we shouldn't either. Despite whatever one may have heard from RT, NATO makes Russian war with European nations less likely, not more likely. Admitting nations to a defensive pact is not an aggressive move against Russia, and only hurts a Russia with a militarily expansionist intent.