> Russia and NATO together doesn't make sense to me. Who would they defend against?
Central Asian Islamic extremists?
> NATO is made to promote democratic values, Putin runs a dictatorship, how does that work?
Russia wasn't clearly a dictatorship when it was admitted to the Partnership for Peace, or when Putin wanted direct admission to NATO without the usual accession process, though, yeah, it is now.
Someone who was unreasonably optimistic might think NATO membership would have mellowed Putin rather than just letting him jam up the alliances consensus-based processes.
Or, alternatively that once in NATO that he could take over the Baltics without opposition having already stationed troops there as part of the NATO taskforce. There were plenty of really good reasons not to want Russia in NATO at the time.
NATO is made to promote democratic values, Putin runs a dictatorship, how does that work?
In a world where Russia also sought to promote free democracies and started with itself, then Russia being in NATO would make sense.