But isn't he creating himself NATO neighbors by expanding his borders up to it? Whereas the alternative status quo is NATO not daring to add Ukraine to it's ranks. Tho I guess the calculation could've been that Ukraine was on track to become more powerful than he'd like it to be, economically or militarily, and thus wanted to cripple it while he was expecting it to be easy, both in terms of retaliation from the West and Ukraine's self defense.