I haven't read the book but here are the broad strokes: NATO is essentially an organization the USA uses to consolidate its vassals in order to destroy Russia, from its very inception. They expanded eastward, breaking promises and treaties and rejecting Russian attempts to join themselves or calls for peace or diplomacy. The war in UKR was purposefully orchestrated with the goal to 1) bleed Russia, eventually leading to hopefully coup and/or balkanization of Russia, 2) force the EU to become more uncritically loyal to the US, cut off their economic ties with RUS and buy USA oil/energy, 3) make a shitload of money for the military industrial complex, make UKR an eternally indebted colony and clean out stock of old ordinance.

Much has happened in the Baltics since WW2, but TLDR USA has trained, armed, bankrolled and PR'd Neo Nazism since forever. The Banderites are UKR's most popular Neo Nazi movement.

UKR used to be neutral. In 2014 USA violently couped their gov't and installed a pro-NATO pro-Nazi puppet. Nazis gained power in the military, economic and political bodies. Not wanting to live under Nazis, the ethnically, linguistically, culturally Russian eastern peoples of UKR in the Donbas tried to secede from UKR. For 8 years, UKR Neo Nazi paramilitaries, again abetted by NATO, and eventually the UKR military proper, began slaughtering Donbas civilians, killing about 14k men women and children with snipers, mortars, bombs and ethnic pogroms.

RUS, for 8 years, tried (as they did the entire Cold War) to invoke peace and diplomacy. UKR signed the Minsk II agreements but quickly resumed ignoring and breaking this treaty.

The violence against these ethnic Russians began spilling over the border. The cherry on the cake was that, despite RUS saying years that it was an unacceptable security redline for them, USA began to push UKR to join NATO, wherein nukes would be installed where they could strike Moscow in minutes. Not only were the Banderites killing their own people, and their Russian cousins, and indoctrinating children in school to Nazi ideology, but now a proverbial loaded gun was en route to be pointed in RUS's face. RUS knew war with UKR was essentially war with USA and the rest of the EU and they prepared their economy for years to withstand the sanctions. They also knew that they essentially had no choice if they wanted to survive in the long term; it was now or never.

It is also important to note that these strategies have much precedent, they are all right out of the USA's imperial playbook in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. Build up fascists to use as proxy forces, coup sanction assassinate terrorize balkanize villify and nuclearly threaten gov'ts who don't bend the knee, and above all always provoke war between neighbors; USA is a capitalist oligarchy and its singular most powerful entity is its war lobby.

There is a lot more to say, both broadly and in detail, but that is a summary of the truth, to counter the USA's narrative where RUS invaded UKR because •checks notes• because Putin is evil and was bored.