"Dear Mr. and Mrs. Ukraine. Allowing you to join NATO will destabilize the region and likely lead to the deaths to thousands of Ukrainians. Instead, we offer you favored economic nation status, and will treat you as a primary trading partner so that your economy can thrive."

Done.

Exactly. Forcing Ukraine to implement the Minsk agreement, and promising that NATO will never site nuklear missiles in Ukraine that can reach Moscow in minutes, was all that was needed to make the war unnecessary. And everybody in the West knew that - they wanted the war.

Could have prevented? This is going exactly according to the plan they have always had.