Ukraine was always going to expose the world-historical folly of NATO expansion. Indeed, Russian and Western diplomats warned, from the collapse of the USSR onwards, that Ukraine becoming part of NATO would provoke Russia. But that didn’t stop successive Western leaders from continuously flirting with the prospect, as part of NATO’s new expansive purpose. As early as 1994, NATO concluded a framework agreement with Ukraine, in the shape of the Partnership for Peace initiative. At the Bucharest summit in 2008, NATO explicitly declared, at the urging of then US president George W Bush, that Ukraine and Georgia would become members. A few weeks later, in an ominous sign of what was to come for Ukraine, Putin launched an invasion of Georgia.