Pat Buchanan has a more coherent take on this than anything you are seeing or hearing on TV.
https://www.unz.com/pbuchanan/is-a-russia-nato-clash-over-ukraine-ahead/He sort of echoes the 2015 discussion at the University of Chicago I posted earlier.
Ukraine is of serious strategic value to Russia.
Ukraine has no strategic value to the USA.
All I can figure is the globalists have decided it's time to destroy Russia. That is the only reason I can imagine for promoting EU and NATO membership for a country that is so crucial to Russia strategically. Putin has made it clear for at least a decade that there would be a military response to any attempt to bring Ukraine into NATO. This leads me to believe the globalists wanted war in Ukraine as a pretense to destroy Russia financially.
The countries that border Russia are looked at by Russia much like we hold our Monroe Doctrine. NATO troops in a bordering country will not be tolerated, anymore than we would tolerate Chinese troops stationed in Canada or Russian troops in Mexico.
Putin is not a madman, he is not unstable. He is going to take over all of Ukraine, probably wreck the infrastructure possibly giving some of it back, but only with ironclad guarantees of Ukraine neutrality going forward.