If you believe the Kremlin narrative around their motivations for the war, and I think there are a LOT of reasons to be skeptical of that narrative, but even if you believe it, the 2022 invasion plans were likely already well underway in 2020. These things are planned years in advance (Bush was already working on an Iraq invasion plan pre 9/11, for example) and once things are in motion the stakeholders are not easily turned around.

Military people do planning at all times. Doesn't mean that the plans will surely be applied.

Very much a false equivalence to the point that it sounds like a bad faith argument. There's a massive difference between contingency planning for a hypothetical versus actively planning for something that's is intended to be agenda item #1.

The first clue to differentiating a contingency from an active plan is resource allocation. Russia moved about 80,000 troops to the Ukrainian border a full 13 months before the invasion. That's over 50% of the force that would eventually enter Ukraine in February 2022 and also about 25% to 35% of Russia's entire non-conscript military force.

Are you skipping the part where NATO was arming and having people in ukraine in the same period?

It’s not just Kremlin narrative, a large wing of the foreign policy establishment also recognized the risk in published articles as far back as the mid 90s.

The war is not about NATO.

That's what Ukraine wants though.

And the parties who don't want it are now illegal so… 100% of the parties want it.

Did they have ties to Russia?

Ah, appeasement? Yeah, that famously always works.

Worked for resolving the Cuban missile crisis (agreeing to remove missiles from Turkey).

But why? That would be a concession to a criminal dictator, and, historically, that _never_ works.

Putin would have just thought up another "reason" to invade in a year or two.