Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul said this on Espreso TV.“What Putin really fears is not NATO expansion. He knows NATO has never attacked Russia or the Soviet Union and never will. Those are facts of history. He knows them. He just tells his people otherwise, portraying this as a replay of the Great Patriotic War. But he knows that is not true,” McFaul said.The diplomat emphasized that the West must do everything possible to help Ukraine preserve its sovereignty and independence.“What Putin truly fears is Ukrainian democracy, Ukrainian freedom, and Ukrainian markets. He has two arguments. On the one hand, he claims Ukrainians are not a free people, that they are not a different people, just Russians with accents. But if Ukrainians practice democracy, it undermines his argument at home about the necessity of dictatorship for the so-called Slavic nation. We in the West must understand that this is what Putin fears the most. And that is why we need to do everything we can to help Ukraine preserve its sovereignty and independence, but also to build its market economy and its democracy. Because those are ultimately the things that scare Putin the most,” he added.On August 19, it was reported that the United States of America and European leaders are actively working on developing a comprehensive package of security guarantees for Ukraine.On September 1, former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who fled to Russia, spoke to Russian media for the first time since 2019 and stated that he had been “moving Ukraine’s accession to the European Union forward.”