By "The West" I assume the article is explicitly referring to firstly the United States of America, and secondly to the EU and NATO. Such statements are usually political in nature and directly related to the modern world. Without going into any great detail, given that it is well outside of the scope of this subreddit, a deluge of articles about "the west" treating Russia badly during the dissolution of the USSR sprung up during the Ukraine crisis.

The most common reaction in America and Europe to the dissolution of the USSR was "surprise". From the first fractures appearing in the Warsaw Pact puppet states to the final dissolution, only a few years had passed, and that it all happened peacefully represents a pretty remarkable difference in the characteristics of the leadership of the USSR from the 50's and 60's to the 80's. As to the central thesis though, how did America and various European countries treat Russia? George H.W. Bush's response was deliberately muted. When asked what his opinion was, he said that he was happy about it, but there were no victory parades, and gloating about the collapse was considered a "no-no" by his administration (wisely so).

In 1991/1992, the post soviet states were recognized by essentially everyone as sovereign independent nations. In 1992, Russia was granted loans and fiscal aid coinciding with their economic transition from the communist system to a modern democratic system. The way privatization worked is pretty famous for creating the oligarchs today, and I wouldn't consider it to be very successful, but never the less this failure was not borne out of malevolence. You could look at the "capitalization" of the Russian economy as America and Europe remaking Russia in their image, but realistically Russians wanted to be more like the West, leadership included, because to many it seemed like the correct direction to go - the West was prosperous, Russia was poor, therefore, becoming more like the West will make us more prosperous. It didn't work out that way in the early 90's, but it wasn't forced upon the Russians against their will under threat of arms.

Dialog and relations between Yeltsin and Bush, then later Yeltsin and Clinton were quite good initially. The main stumbling block after a couple of years was Nato enlargement. This didn't officially occur until after referendums in 1997, followed by official accession in 1999, just outside the Subreddit's scope, but the initial dialog surrounding it was happening earlier than that. Although Russia had initially expressed interest in the idea of eventually joining NATO as a member state (how serious they were about this is not known, but that they had considered it at some point and mentioned that to NATO is factual), by 1994-1995 it was clear that such a prospect was unlikely. At the same time, former Soviet satellites were agitating to join. Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary were as a bloc attemping to join both the EU and NATO. Russia was not pleased about this. The final diplomatic breakthrough between Yeltsin and Clinton happened in I believe '96 (I will check this date later when I have more time), with Yeltsin telling Clinton at a summit that since he could not stop them joining if all parties were insistent on it, then he would not diplomatically oppose it, even though he was unhappy about it. This was part of a series of broader treaties and negotiations, the Russians being unwilling to die on that particular hill and instead seeking better outcomes in other areas. Yeltsin wanted good relations with the west.

NATO was initially not eager to expand east, and it was the continual insistence of the countries attempting to join, combined with the First Chechen War breaking out in '96 (correction thanks to OiBoi, it was ongoing in '96) that gave the final push to them accepting the first enlargement. As history would show it would be the first of several, which is where most of the complaining about the West "mistreating Russia" comes from. Various claims are made that "America promised not to expand NATO one inch towards the USSR" during negotiations on West-East German reunification, although I can also find sources (including Gorbachev himself) who state that such guarantees were never made, since at that time nobody ever imagined that the Warsaw Pact and the USSR were going to suddenly disintegrate. It's a very sensitive issue that is very much related to modern international relations.

Ultimately though, comparisons to the treatment of Germany in the post-WWI settlement are ludicrous.

There isn't much to go on here, but from what you wrote, I don't see a comparison.

First I don't know who "The West" is in 1918. France, Great Britain,and the US all had varied relations to postwar-Germany.

France lost millions of young men to a bordering nation in an ongoing feud that extends to the Napoleonic Wars. The US came in late and got out fast, with little grudge against the new Kaiser-less Germany.

The US would go through the age of prosperity in the 1920's and bail out German banks ending a horrific era of inflation with the Dawes Plan and eventual Young Plan. France occupied the Ruhr exacerbating the inflation crisis of the Weimar Republic.

There are two (big) examples, but as you can see it doesn't seem an appropriate comparison. It sounds like the article was making some kind of comment on The West (what we today know as the West) and Capitalism in general. As for a comparison of the end of the Cold War to the end of the First or Second World War's, it seems a hard sell.

Yes, everyone wanted business opportunities but if we ignore private initiatives like the Soros Foundation which paid for language education programs, there were many major initiatives brought to bear in Russia and the CIS.

Okay the World Bank was there for the privatization. It wasn't optimal but a full discussion is more likely to be appropriate for an economics related sub. Russia had an interesting issue in that the fundamental organization was based around legislation from pre-revolutionary times that was based on the German model. The Americans tried to change this into a Anglo-Saxon model. Both worked but with piecemeal introduction, there were too many holes.

The US also was in Russia through USAID, their international development program providing economic and business expertise as well as assistance with anti-corruption activities (which wasn't popular).

The EU came in with TACIS. Technical Aid for the Commonwealth of Independent States. This was different to other programs aimed at potential new EU members such as PHARE and wasn't linked to any intention. The TACIS program can be summed up by this paper. It was relatively successful. There were other EU programs aimed at the more selfish intent of making it easier to transport goods into and out of Russia and the rest of the CIS. All EU member countries at the time participated in the TACIS program.

In Germany, there was support from the GTZ and the KfW through their TRANSFORM Program.

Many other EU countries had programs there including the UK and France. I believe the UK was supporting the modernization of dairy farming amongst other things. No source on that, but I was at a talk given by one of the guys leading the project. The problem was simply that too much milk was spoiling before it got to market and it was easier to find Finnish milk than milk from the oblast in St Petersburg.

Whereas the goals could be seen to be sympathetic to western values, as in better democracy, better participation at all levels in the capital markets and better market access - all were scared of a Russia fracturing and would rather that it continued towards job creation and prosperity.