In the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, separatist movements inside Russia (most notably, but not exclusively, Chechnya), were fueled by Western money. Western money also helped to exacerbate the situation in many of the former Soviet Republics. You are judging NATO by the most rabid anti-Russians in it, namely, the Poles and the Baltic States. The visceral anti-Russian hatred was strong at the moment of independence and yes, it did push pro-NATO sentiment. However, if you look at Belorussia, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and the Central Asian states, you will see that until very recently public sentiment was overwhelmingly AGAINST NATO membership in all of those countries (EVEN MOLDOVA, where the Transdnestrian Republic has existed at the sufferance of the Russian Fourteenth Army since 1991).

The official government positions of all of these countries were, likewise, anti-NATO expansion. That's why Western-funded and planned coups were executed in many of these countries; if you can't change public opinion, at least you can change the decision makers. These so-called "color revolutions" were clearly done with Western intelligence money and groups like Soros's Open Borders Foundation (which was operating in Kiev since at least 1994-5, for example). In the Ukraine, the anti-Russian sentiment was fueled by the extremist Ukrainians who were the children and grandchildren of Nazi collaborators who fled to the US and Canada after 1945. The numbers of these people is much higher than what many might believe, and when the USSR collapsed in 1991 they were ready with flashy, free "history" books that blamed Russia for everything (including when the Mongols sacked Kiev). These books were atrocious in every respect. The lies peddled were Goebbels-level: modern Ukrainians are the descendants of the Scythians and Sarmatians, Ukraine contributed to almost every technological achievement possible, innocent "Ukrainians" were killed at Baby Yar (the fact they were Jews who were turned in by their Ukrainian neighbors was totally left out) and the 1932 Famine was something ethnic Russians perpetuated against the Ukrainian people alone (when in fact Ukrainian Intelligence names 16 culpable individuals, who are ethnic Poles, Latvians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Georgians - one very notable one among them, and only a couple of Russians), ignoring the deaths in Russia proper and Kazakhstan, which lost 25% of its population and still hasn't recovered demographically from the famine.

Even that influx of lies and crazy neo-Nazi nationalism wasn't enough to move Ukraine into the pro-Western camp, though. Even after the first coup, the so-called Orange Revolution in 2004, Ukrainians were firmly against NATO membership. That didn't even start to change until after 2014, when anyone who was remotely pro-Russian was brutally silenced and active measures against the Russian language started taking place.

Not only that, but Russia posed absolutely no threat to its neighbors and initiated no military actions against any of its neighbors until 2014. To the contrary, Russia provided peacekeeping troops to several international conflicts, such as the 1993 Abkhazian Civil War, the Azeri-Armenian conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, and elsewhere. Russian peacekeepers were sanctioned by the UN and welcomed by the leaders of the newly independent countries.

The presence of Russian troops in Transdnestria was the only real "sticking point" anywhere, and that was an issue of international politics, ostensibly protecting the ethnic Russians there and would have been solved easily. Also, Russia retained only one military base outside the borders of the USSR, a naval base in Syria.

All of this changed as a result of Western countries replacing popularly elected leaders - Shevardnadze with Saakashvili in Georgia in 2003, Yanukovich (heir to Kuchma) in Ukraine in 2004, Akaev in Kyrgyzstan in 2005. There were failed efforts rolled out in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan as well.

Saakashvili in particular was dead set on joining NATO, and so he started a disastrous war that he thought would be a quick and decisive success by acting by surprise. When Russian peacekeepers took the side of the Abkhaz and Ossetian separatists and were able to resupply faster than anticipated, Saakashvili almost suffered the fate of Saddam Hussein.

Note that the West tried again recently to tip Georgia in its favor, but the Parliament (which was popularly elected) overcame the resistance of a very vocal minority in Tbilisi.

In 2022 the West tried to tip Kazakhstan, but Putin sent troops to support Tokayev and helped Kazakh forces crush the uprising.

Every single time that Russia has acted, it has been due to unconstitutional and illegal coups in states where the vast majority of the population has been ambivalent at best to NATO membership.

So, aside from the shrill voices of the postage stamps of the Baltics, your narrative about NATO is just factually incorrect. Russia has not been uniformly hated or reviled, and countries have not been banging on the door to get into NATO. The impetus has come from the NATO side, and Ukraine in particular decided to "fuck around and find out". The outcome of the war is likely to be either the total collapse of Ukraine as a state or the establishment of an economically unviable rump state in the West of the current borders of Ukraine. I may be wrong, but I don't believe Russia will stop its current war of attrition until the Ukrainians run out of people, which may happen in the next few months.