The combination of Russia's decades-old fear of an eastwards-expanding NATO and its own invasion into Ukraine seems to have had an adverse effect: non-aligned Finland and Sweden strongly considering joining the anti-Russian alliance and increasing the tense stand-off between Moscow and the west.
"A sort of 'neo-isolation' is how the Russian public sees NATO's eastward expansion." At least, in the opinion of Russian President Boris Yeltsin, who wrote a long letter to his US counterpart, "Dear Bill" Clinton in 1993, when it became clear that some of the former satellite states of the USSR wanted to swap sides.
