A post from another forum that I thought hit the nail squarely on the head...
"I honestly think the demand to join NATO was silly. NATO wasn’t going to want Ukraine, specifically because that was going to anger Russia to the extent that a war would take place, and EU membership was too far off the table given how damn poor and corrupt Ukraine was. It’s why I think this whole Russian folly into Ukraine was just a face palm moment. Putin thought of the worst possible scenarios and immediately acted upon it the worst possible way."