The NATO declaration from the 2008 Bucharest Summit was that Georgia and Ukraine will eventually become NATO members, both unacceptable for Russia. Georgia was promptly invaded in 2008. Until 2014 under president Yanukovych Ukraine did not seek closer ties to NATO. That changed in 2014 and Russia annexed Crimea. [1] While Russia wanted the Minsk agreements to work, the West just used them as tools to buy more time. Despite repeated protests and demands from Russia right until the invasion, NATO position did not show any signs of change. So in my opinion that is all just escalation to get NATO to accept the demands or prevent a NATO membership with force. Even in the negotiation in the first weeks of the war, Russia was willing to end the war for non-membership of Ukraine.
[1] The timeline in late 2013 and 2014 is somewhat confusing with respect to my point of view, the turn towards NATO seems to come after the annexation and the events in eastern Ukraine. But there might have been an element of anticipation or non-public information.
Forget rights, they mean nothing without the power to enforce them. Think about the actual situation. Ukraine has good reasons to join NATO. Russia has good reasons to want Ukraine not in NATO. Those are conflicting goals, you can not have both. One party has to give up their goal, either Ukraine decides not to join, or NATO does not allow them, or Russia has to live with Ukraine in NATO. Or maybe there could be some compromise, NATO membership but no foreign troops or weapons, similar to Norway. But none of that happened, so Russia decided to settle the issue with force. Which is the only option if other means did not resolve the conflict.
You probably want to argue that Ukraine is a sovereign state and they can join whichever alliance they want. But this is where I disagree. A NATO membership is not just a signature on a document, it has physical consequences. Not that I think NATO is planning to invade Russia, but as a country you have to think in longer terms and be careful. Yesterday the democracy leading the world - at least in the own view - today pondering to take over some friendly countries and kicking an entire population out of the remains of their land to turn it into a holiday resort. With such uncertainty in mind, Ukraine becoming a NATO member is a security threat to Russia.
So countries do not live in a vacuum, they can not do whatever they please even though they are sovereign countries. An the USA has exactly the same view, they did not think that Cuba can have Soviet nuclear weapons, even though that was a reaction to an attempt coup d'état by the USA. Or only weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine, the USA made clear that Solomon Islands can not decide to host a Chinese military base. And yes, there are obviously different issues, I am not saying that every demand by a neighbor is reasonable and worth considering.
