This pure willful ignorance. In what world would any nation forecast a near term military invasion in advance? Further, many experts believe that few within Putin's inner circle knew about the invasion prior, so its quite possible they were being honest.

W.R.T. NATO and Ukraine, Putin has been broadcasting his geopolitical goals for a long time now.

> I think it is obvious that NATO expansion does not have any relation with the modernisation of the Alliance itself or with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today? No one even remembers them. But I will allow myself to remind this audience what was said. I would like to quote the speech of NATO General Secretary Mr Woerner in Brussels on 17 May 1990. He said at the time that: “the fact that we are ready not to place a NATO army outside of German territory gives the Soviet Union a firm security guarantee”. Where are these guarantees?

2007
https://aldeilis.net/english/putins-historical-speech-munich...

> The president said he would be forced to target Russian rockets at Ukraine in response to a possible deployment of a US missile shield in the eastern European country.

2008
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/feb/12/russia.ukraine

> Putin's words are seen as the latest in an ongoing volley of pointed warnings to the West not to meddle in Ukraine, which has such close historical and cultural ties to Russia that the Kremlin considers the country firmly within its sphere of interests.

> "The Russian leadership is very apprehensive about what it sees as Western moves designed to tear Ukraine away from Russia," says Dmitry Trenin

2009
http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1900838,00...

> Russia is making a last-minute push to derail the integration agreement, which is due to be signed in late November. Instead, Moscow wants to lure its neighbour into its own alliance, a customs union with Belarus and Kazakhstan that critics have referred to as a reincarnation of the Soviet Union. Russia has made it clear that Ukraine has to choose between the two options and cannot sign both agreements.

2013
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/22/ukraine-europe...

> President Viktor Yanukovych's flight from Ukraine in the face of the Maidan uprising, which took place on the eve of the closing day of those Winter Games, astonished and enraged Putin. In his pique, as Putin proudly recalled in a March 2015 Russian government television film, he responded by ordering the takeover of Crimea after an all-night meeting.

2015
https://www.newsweek.com/why-putin-afraid-ukraine-332276

> The Russian president accused Kiev of playing a dangerous game and said he saw no point in holding a new round of talks about the troubled peace process in eastern Ukraine on the sidelines of a G20 summit in China next month.

> Putin’s comments stirred fears that Russia, which has been steadily reinforcing Crimea militarily, may be considering new military action.

2016
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-crisis-crimea-att...

> Russian President Vladimir Putin says he believes Russians and Ukrainians constitute one nation and that the countries should find a way to integrate.

2019
https://news.yahoo.com/putin-russians-ukrainians-one-people-...

> Russian President Vladimir Putin’s comments about the legitimacy of Russia’s borders in a documentary broadcast on Russian television have rattled some U.S. allies, fearful that he might be laying the groundwork for a further military incursion into Ukraine.

2020
https://time.com/5858231/putin-ukraine/

You're kidding yourself if you think this doesn't have anything to do with NATO.