> hoping that Russia would grow closer to EU

The people of Russia and the EU would 100% love this if you were to take away all the propaganda. But this view doesn't seem to be shared by the ruling elites and the US doesn't seem want to want to allow that profits made from "Marshall money" fuel in any way the development of Russia.

And there's also some mindset incompatibility that would need to be resolved first:

Western European countries have actually accelerated their development through fierce competition and even war amongst them... I think this is what in the end lead to the enlightenment and then the industrial revolution. But war was kept in check in a way, it was "war by the rules" sort of with conditions to limit destruction of intellectual and material capital. People died, a lot, but knowledge, tradition and core assets too, were preserved. And "being able to play The Game right" is still a fundamental condition for "joining The West(ern Europe)".

Russia doesn't seem to get how to "be corrupt, but not THAT corrupt" (eg. there's corruption in France and Germany too, but it does NOT undermine the foundations of society - there are soft subtle limits that people learn how to thread around). (+HINT: you can't remove corruption and nepotism 100% without, paradoxically, getting back to 100% corruption and nepotism because you'd need to centralize authoritarian power to fully/absolutely solve corruption. "All or nothing" thinking doesn't work. It's always "pink" or "gray", never red&white or black&white. It's subtleties and mental gymnastics like this that make Western Europe what it is and give its power, this "the hidden soul of Europe" in a way, "discretely weaponizing subtlety and paradox for the purpose of furthering the development of humanity, science and knowledge". And it's stuff you'll not find in any book. It's stuff that people need to figure out by themselves and also let other figure it out by themselves.) Or that "you can only get into a real hot war AFTER you've won at least say ~50% of the `war for peoples' harts`, so that in the event of a victory you can maintain power without having to `break people into submission` by physical or mental violence". Or that there's an unwritten rule between "proportionality of assets and power - you can't hold immense political or military power in your hands if you're not backed by the people holding most assets, and you can't hold assets without having them taken or severely taxed-away if you don't also assume political responsibility and power, even indirectly". And so on and so on and so on...

Russia just doesn't seem to grok the underlying unwritten rules of western civilization...

Neither does eg. China, but they're not expected to either. Russia keeps wanting to "come and play" with Europe, but they just can't get rules of the game / the dance steps. And sure, the rules are in slow but continuous evolution, but that's the thing, figuring them out and then figuring out how to keep figuring them out and keep playing "the good game".

To conclude: you'd need to solve both (1) US opposition and (2) mindset incompatibility, and I think this is REALLY hard (not impossible though), in order to get Russia and Europe together in any meaningful way!