I'm not sure that where Zelenskyy met his European counterparts is relevant. If Helmer is right, so what? That just makes Zelenskyy and his crew smart enough to fight Putin on his terms. Good for him. Russia does Deep Fakes of Zelenskyy telling his troops to surrender, and Zelenskyy in turn uses some Adobe After Effects to do a little trickery of his own. Sign me up to the charity that helps fund him.
As for the NATO encroachment, which has been going on for some time, keep in mind that Boris Yeltsin was all over the idea of Russia joining the Western European sphere of influence.
His dream was to have Russia join the vast corporate empire that was America/Europe and the emerging (at the time) Asian states.
So, really, it's all Yeltsin's fault. He was said to be pissed when a few former Soviet bloc nations joined NATO without his being told ahead of time by Clinton (Boris to Bill: "I thought we had an understanding!") but these countries didn't want to just form a buffer between the two spheres of influence, which was another idea proposed at the time. They wanted protection from Russia because they didn't trust its history.
The "NATO expansion is bad argument" seems to discount the desires of these sovereign nations to be part of the western European sphere of Ayn Rand capitalism, which I think is what you really (rightfully) object to. But objecting to our current gilded age has no relevance to either NATO or Putin.
Yeltsin didn't get what he wanted because he let his country corrupt itself into gangster capitalism, which is even worse that the stuff we are toiling under.
As the gangsters took over the Russian economy, the desire of former Soviet republics to hug NATO grew stronger. For good reason, in my opinion. Who can blame them for not wanting to get sucked into that mess?
I agree with your overall feeling that the "NATO expansion is bad" argument doesn't equate to support for Putin.
I disagree that we should give Putin cover with that argument. These states have the right to join NATO if they wish. They were oppressed under Stalinism for years, then they saw gangsters take over Russian industry. What's to like with all of that?
Add to that this: Unlike uneducated Americans, these small former Soviet republics have known for some time what Putin is capable of. See Grozny in Chechnya. See Georgia. I'll quote from a 2008 news article about Putin's assault on Georgia:
“I can’t understand their logic. They are bombing everything. Why are they bombing civilians?” said Nick Kipshidze, a local doctor.
Remind you of anything?
I have been working with Ukrainians over Zoom for the last 10 months. It's been pretty heart wrenching to watch their faces change over the last month. People who felt deeply integrated with Russia now consider it their mortal enemy. It's much like our own civil war was. Russian families in Ukraine are now on the outs, severely so, with their Russian kin in Russia.
The Ukrainians I know seemed indifferent about NATO before all this. They just wanted to work and earn money for their families.
I don't know if they now want to join NATO, but Russia will be an enemy state for a very long time unless the Russians turn away from authoritarianism. I think Americans undervalue the freedoms we have. Ukrainians sure don't, that's for sure.
I'm no fan of our current corporate system of government, and so I'll turn your argument on its head a little by saying that my empathy towards sovereign nations wanting to be part of NATO doesn't make me an Ayn Rand acolyte.
But blaming NATO expansion for Putin's behavior isn't a premise I can get on board with.
If NATO had not expanded, does anybody think Lithuania wouldn't be next on Putin's war strategy board? It's a good guess, in fact, that he would have gone after some of those small countries first, as a prelude to the much larger Ukraine.
