In the interest of upholding intellectual integrity, I will admit you have a point, that we don’t actually have a recent official request from Russia to join NATO.

On the other hand, to pretend that this process is somehow all about clear rules and truly open door policies, is very disingenuous. Are you saying that this is what Russia would need to do:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=W6ofIQi5XVY

Obviously, it’s silly. There are a lot of unspoken considerations for which country gets into NATO and which country is pushed into it despite what their citizens want. Rule #1 is: Russia never gets in, that would be like China getting into QUAD. If Russia joined NATO, its raison d’etre would be obsolete, and moreover, USA (its main member) would be increasingly unnecessary since Russia would be then selling and using its weapons for European security. That is competition USA does not want.

And look, USSR formally applied in 1954, and was rejected without any formal discussion! That is not a lie but simply a fact, and reported by NY Times back then:

https://www.nytimes.com/1954/04/01/archives/soviet-in-bid-to...

Similarly, mainstream outlets also reported as early as 2001 that Putin continuously and repeatedly advocated for Russia to be in NATO:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2001/08/putin-i...

And back in 2001 NYTimes reported how Bush anyway pushed for NATO to go right up to Russia’s border…

https://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/18/world/cordial-rivals-how-...

My characterization is quite accurate as to the main causes of this. Some even said Bush was pushing to go into Iraq on “day 1”… whether that is true or not is unclear because governments are opaque, but we DO KNOW that Bush was the biggest force behind the push to keep expanding NATO to Russia’s border and get Ukraine and Georgia in, so you downplaying that is disingenuous. It was a very destructive push by Bush. And nearly all of the foreign policy experts in USA, as well as his own ambassadors etc. ALL WARNED BUSH AND CLINTON against this, and predicted this exact outcome.

https://theconversation.com/amp/ukraine-war-follows-decades-...

In June 1997, 50 prominent foreign policy experts signed an open letter to Clinton, saying, “We believe that the current U.S. led effort to expand NATO … is a policy error of historic proportions” that would “unsettle European stability.”

In 2008, Burns, then the American ambassador to Moscow, wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice: “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.”

So this reaction by Russia acting like a cornered animal before it is completely surrounded is not “unprovoked”. It was systematically provoked, and tried every other avenue to stop this — except FORMALLY applying to NATO, which I blame Putin for. Of course, Russia’s politicians are just as negligent and dumb as other countries’ politicians. Putin should have applied every year, and publicly lampooned the rejections year after year. He should have worked on having better PR for Russia’s positions to be heard in the West. RT was not enough.

But to blame solely Putin? No, that is simply regurgitating propaganda.