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.
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