One of the objectives of Putin is to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO, out of concern that Russia would have a direct border with a NATO country. Too late: Russia already borders on Estonia and Latvia, which are both members of NATO now:
In 1955, the USSR created the Warsaw Pact in reaction to West Germany joining NATO:
In 2017, after the Brexit vote, I thought that English-language media might miss a shift in EU focus. While the Britain was part of the EU, Europe was entangled in the geopolitical concerns of the English-speaking world: the British Commonwealth and the United States. With Britain gone, I expected the European Union to shift its attention to the problem of Russian aggressiveness. Russia had already intervened in Georgia and the Ukraine, including the annexation of Crimea in 2014.
NATO and the European Union are clearly different. The USA, Canada, UK, Norway, Iceland, Turkey, and the former Yugoslav republics are part of NATO but not the EU. Finland, Sweden, Ireland, Austria, and Malta are part of the EU, but not NATO. However, among the slavic eastern European countries that were part of either the USSR or the Warsaw Pact, all joined both the EU and NATO. The attitude of Poland, in particular, is very hard-line against Russia, even as it is having serious political differences with Western European countries.
My guess is that the Russian invasion of the Ukraine will harden European attitudes against Russia, possibly provoking Norway to join the EU and Sweden, Finland, and Austria to join NATO. Countries within the EU have had serious differences in recent decades, preventing closer cultural cohesion and political integration. This unprovoked attack on a neighboring country will probably trigger greater European cohesion and integration, perhaps to a level of federation comparable to India.