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There's a chapter on that in Prisoners of Geography (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoners_of_Geography)
The whole thing relies on the Russian populace believing that they have anything we want on their land and that the west hasn't learned that land invasions of Russia are stupid.
ffm-
I'm certainly not suggesting that this idea excuses the invasion, the constant interference in the politics of neighbours, etc. It would be far more sensible for Russia to adapt to a new position in the world, like a post-Imperial Britain has been trying to do for the last 70-80 years or so.
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the Russian populace believing that they have anything we want on their land
The irony is that their natural resources are cheaper to us when they are in Russian hands and therefore extracted by workers earning appallingly low Russian wages. Compared to what it would cost us if the EU invaded and annexed them somehow and ended up having to pay Russian miners and oil field workers the going rate over here.
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...The West could be perceived as slow to adopt this lesson, given the number of attempts in the last few centuries. The problem for Russia is that even spectacularly unsuccessful invasions have been extremely damaging and costly to defend. It seems an outmoded way of thinking though, to me - but perhaps this 19th century mindset informs the perspective of the Russian leadership?
GeneralStrike
starfish&coffee
It's not only propaganda, centuries of Russian geopolitics have been based on controlling a large enough area of the Northern European Steppe such that the avenues for largescale movement of armies into their territory is constrained by mountain ranges, rivers, etc. Basically, they want to limit the routes of tanks into Russia to topographical bottlenecks that they can easily plug. It sounds daft and may well be daft, but it's not entirely uninformed by history. When you understand that this is a key part of the Russian perspective, you see why NATO expansion into former Warsaw Pact countries is interpreted as aggression - the available routes for forces to enter Russia have become thousands of kilometers wide, Belarus is at risk of becoming an indefensible salient, etc. I'm not saying this is a correct or helpful way to view the world, because overall we will not progress by treating the planet like a giant game of Risk. However it does render some of the batshit comprehensible.
Imagine how much of this shit could be avoided if people didn't get so excited about Clausewitz.