I don’t view it as inevitable because this invasion itself was quite predictable. Putin has warned repeatedly about the consequences of NATO expansion and we ignored him. We treated him like some jacking old uncle mumbling in the corner which we could ignore. But the brutality he has shown in the past has shown that we should have taken him serious.

Promising Ukraine NATO membership in the future was a very poor strategy. A promised like that showed a complete disregard for the threat Russia represented. We should have shut up about it until we actually invited Ukraine into NATO.

Promising NATO some time into the distant future was akin to paining a target on Ukraine.

It is of course not our fault that Russia is a bully but we must take criticism for ignoring the threat this bully represented.

Making Ukraine a part of NATO would always have been risky given its large Russian minority.