alt Hacker NewsI only learned about this a few years ago. Before the Cuban Missile Crisis (where Russia installed nuclear missiles in Cuba), the US installed nukes in Italy and Turkey. This made USSR very upset. Plus, the US was heavily meddling in Cuban domestic affairs. The first two paragraphs are very instructive here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis
My point: I think USSR (and Cuba) had a good reason to install those missiles. It wasn't an unprovoked action.
And as I understand it, part of the solution to the Cuban Missile Crisis involved the US quietly agreeing to abandon the placement of nukes in Turkey.
There is some analogy here for the Ukraine NATO situation.