The weirdest part is the idea that Ukraine could ever become a part of NATO in the first place.
Is every single person in the Zelensky regime so utterly incompetent that they genuinely believed that would actually happen while they were in a civil war between 2014 and 2022, not to mention now when they are in an all out war with a literal nuclear power? I very much doubt that.
Something doesn't add up here.
It's very simple. Ruasia doesn't want Ukraine to be in NATO. Therefore, the messaging from the coup government is, "we are gonna join NATO". It doesn't need to make sense so long as it antagonizes.
It's also part of internal propaganda to signal who should be thought of as allies. Part of a general attempt to integrate with the EU (EU doesn't want them, interestingly enough) and that requires consent manufacturing.
Zelensky is obviously a corrupt piece of shit (and it also should be noted that he ran his presidential campaign on supposedly wanting good relations with Russia), but I don't really think your comment here explains much at all.
The question of how anyone in the regime could have possibly thought this whole thing would go their way remains unanswered.
I'm questioning the premise that they even really tried
I think you have to factor in that the Jewish President of Ukraine who had a shit-ton of antisemitic nazi brigades doing pogroms and war crimes for almost a decade suddenly found himself in a position where the hegemony wanted the same thing the nazis wanted (cough cough project aerodynamic) and Zelensky personally wanted to keep breathing, and now we're here
Why would they, Ukraine was the poorest and most corrupt country in all of Yurope. That was before the war. This is like admitting Bolivia to NAFTA. It's just a whole slew of problems waiting to happen. The EU doesn't even want to admit Serbia or Turkey, which are like 3x richer (per capita).
What I had in mind is that certain folks treat the EU as being a basic good and that if you want to be part of it, cool and good countries would never stand in your way. I don't have hexbear people in mind, that's just what I think of when UA + EU comes up.
Oh, perfectly acceptable. I also didn't have hexbear users in mind. I just remember 2015 when Europeans wanted to kick Greece out of the EU when they fabricated and embezzled like 10% of their GDP. They called that "irresponsible, not in line with our values" etc.
And now these people want the Ukraine in their club? Lol.