What about Ukraine’s national interest in trying to prevent itself from being invaded by Russia? For the third time?
I totally understand where Ukraine stands. The U.S., European NATO countries, Ukraine, and Russia all have competing interests here. The U.S. doesn’t want war with Russia, but we also don’t want to enable potential aggression. Ukraine doesn’t want to be vulnerable to Russia, and becoming a NATO nation would put numerous friends on their side who would be treaty-bound to intervene militarily should Russia attack. Europe depends heavily on oil/natural gas flow from Russia and the BTC pipeline, so they have a significant interest in not provoking Russia. Russia wants buffer zones on its borders and regional dominance while protecting ethnic Russians in some of the former Soviet satellites (Ukraine, in particular).
I think Russia will win this one on the diplomatic and maybe informational fronts, but lose it on the military and economic fronts. The U.S. can pose as the Good Guys For Freedom, stating the right of self-determination of all peoples while allowing the European nations to shoot down the membership proposal for their greedy purposes. Russia maintains Ukraine as a buffer, and Putin further grinds the Russian military and economy into the ground by playing in Ukraine.