Thank you for taking time to open your understanding of the issue from your current perspective. Let me help you by providing another perspective that is not so US centered.

I do not know if you realize that the failure of Minsk 2 was mainly due to lack of Russia's willingness to remove all the weapons it moved into Ukraine and its lack of willingness to dismantle all the terrorist groups it established there? Are you trying to hide the fact that Russia was the aggressor and was behind all the formed militias there? The fact is, Russia continued to move heavy weapons into Ukraine after signing Minsk 2 agreements. It is clear by now that Russia never had intention to follow Minsk 2 because it would have opened road to fair democratic referendum it would have lost most likely.

You probably do not realize that the idea of Russia joining NATO was not proposed in good faith. In fact it never materialized because Russia did not want to reform its military to meet NATO standards. Of course it was never made seriously and was just another tactical lie to confuse Western leaders. Even more so, how would have Russia being in NATO eliminated Putin's ambitions to annex again territories previously occupied by Soviet Russia? Putin made his desire to do so blatantly clear in 2007 and it is unlikely that this idea did not exists in his mind already before becoming Russia's leader.

It looks like you are quite conveniently forgetting or you are not at all aware of the existence of CIS, exactly the EU like federation you propose here. Gorbachev era was again another NEP, a temporary fallback from hard rule in hopes to survive until former power is restored. There was very specific reason to USSR collapse. It was not a voluntary union. It was de facto Russian occupation. Galsnost made it possible to discuss it openly and everyone realized that they indeed do not want to be in this forced union. CIS was the new USSR built on more equal grounds (minus the Baltic states that felt too violated by Russia because of hard Russification forced upon these countries). Did CIS prevent Russia to attack its members? Of course not. It attacked Georgia in 2008 and it attacked Ukraine in 2014.

So lets discuss the actual reason behind Russia's Ukrainian invasion.

Putin stated in 2007 that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century. What did he mean by that when in fact USSR transformed into CIS? There is no question about it that he was bitter about Russia losing its de facto absolute power over its occupied territories and had to deal with them as equal partners.

Since then Putin has in plain sight prepared for the restoration of the former Russian empire. To create the ideological platform for the expansion, he turned to two historical figures. One of them is of course former Soviet leader and mass murderer Joseph Stalin. Another one has unfortunately gained much less attention in West. It is the exiled emigrant of the Russian Empire Ivan Ilyin. Putin went to great lengths to restore the image of this lost Russia's son. He moved his remains back to Russia and consecrated his grave in 2009 and has since then quoted him extensively and has recommended his books to from Duma members to military cadets. But what is there so special about him?

Ivan Ilyin was a philosopher. He was quite liberal thinking and hopeful about the more democratic future of the Russian Empire, but before he managed to finish his thesis and graduate, the World War started. His views started to turn into what we now call Fascist. He adored Mussolini. He worshiped Hitler and went to great lengths to demonstrate that Nazism had its roots in Russia because of shared anti-Semitism. He was of course disappointed when he realized that Hitler's views on Russians are not very favorable to put it mildly.

In Ilyin's view, Russians where the superior race, but most especially Russia's Fascist leader, who should redeem the world. He built the legitimacy of this power on top of Orthodox Christianity. It became clear to him after Hitler attacked Russia, that Russia has been the all suffering nation for 1000 years, in fact he realized that Russia is the Christ of the nations and it has purpose - only Russia, being pure and without sin, can redeem the world, that is conquer it with the help of all powerful Russian Fascist leader. This is actually the idea of Ivan Ilyin and not Putin's, that Ukraine does not exist.

But why revive all these crazy expansionist ideas? Why start to glorify a mass murderer, condemned even in USSR, under whose power the Russia gained greatest influence and territory? It would only increase the bitterness. Unless of course there is a purpose, the goal, the plan.

I'll stop here to give you change to catch up.

If you want to know more about Ivan Ilyin then historian and Holocaust researcher Timothy Snyder wrote fairly good introduction in 2018:

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/03/16/ivan-ilyin-putins-p...

He wrote again about him after Russian invasion. I think this writing can give better spiritual feeling:

https://snyder.substack.com/p/russias-easter-offensive