Comment by bluGill
6 hours ago
Ukraine was never in NATO. Ukraine was getting closer and closer to NATO and there was reason to suspect they might join in a few years, but that hadn't happened (and there were a few things wrong in Ukraine that NATO was quietly demanding Ukraine fix first)
Still it shows the strategy of testing the reaction, which we can see in other regions, too.
Ukraine wasn't getting closer to NATO until Russia invaded Crimea in 2014. Both its Constitution and popular polls were against joining NATO (i.e. remain a neutral country).