Minsk II would have made it impossible for Ukraine to enter NATO. The two counties in the Donbas would have stayed in Ukraine, but had autonomy and some veto powers. Meaning they could veto Ukraine entering NATO, which of course they would have done.

Outside of Minsk, I’ve read (but I’m only mid-high confident it is right) that Putin was happy with Minsk II, because Ukraine is poor and corrupt with a lot of social payments. Absorbing Ukraine would be a major financial burden. Better to have them neutral, corrupt and weak — but not on Russia’s financial ledger.

This is also the same reason that several EU states, most notably Germany, did not want Ukraine. Poor is OK to let in and some corruption is OK (see Romania for example — although they’ve gotten MUCH better), but add in a lot of debt and Ukraine is a bad choice to add.

So to get into NATO, the Donbas had to leave Ukraine. It is not just a BTW that polls since 2014 saying Ukraine favors entering NATO do not include the Donbas. When the Donbas was included, there was not majority support.

All that being said, I have from a pretty trusted personal source that the Donbas did some goading of Ukraine to get Ukraine to shell them. That story only goes so far. Documentation BEFORE the invasion said that Ukraine committed a majority of the cease fire violations, but it was not overwhelming.

All in all the goading and desire for a war (IMO) came from the US. We want Putin’s Russia to end like the USSR did after Afghanistan, where we also led the USSR in (Brzezinski has discussed this on the record).

That doesn’t absolve Russia of the guilt of the invasion, but the context matters.