There are a few glaring problems with this narrative of yours. First, Russia and Ukraine coexisted perfectly fine until the west decided to coup the democratically elected government in Ukraine and install the current regime. Second, is that Russia continues to coexist with its neighbours in the east and it’s not invading any of them. It would be far easier for Russia to do that than to push west against NATO.

Finally, Stoltenberg let the cat out of the bag and admitted that the reason the war happened was due to NATO expansion and not because Russia is trying to take over Europe:

Then lastly on Sweden. First of all, it is historic that now Finland is member of the Alliance. And we have to remember the background. The background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition for not invade Ukraine. Of course we didn’t sign that.

The opposite happened. He wanted us to sign that promise, never to enlarge NATO. He wanted us to remove our military infrastructure in all Allies that have joined NATO since 1997, meaning half of NATO, all the Central and Eastern Europe, we should remove NATO from that part of our Alliance, introducing some kind of B, or second class membership. We rejected that.