Russia Ukraine war, page-198394

Back in September 2023, Stoltenberg (the head of NATO) stated the following: Russia invaded Ukraine over fears of NATO expansion.
His whole speech is transcripted on the NATO website. In that same speech, Stoltenberg mentioned that Russia approached NATO multiple times (before the war), seeking to negotiate/discuss NATO's plans of expansion into Ukraine, since Russia considered that expansion as a security threat. Just like US would consider it a security threat, if Russia stationed it's own forces and missiles say in Mexico.
NATO brushed those security concerns off and simply ignored Russian requests. NATO continued on it's path to 'adopt' Ukraine as one of their members, ramping up their training programs. By the beginning of the war Ukraine was already well on it's way to becoming a de-facto NATO member.

David Arakhamia, the head of Zelensky's party CLEARLY stated, that the one major thing that Russia was asking for, was for Ukraine to remain neutral. Are you saying that he is lying? If so - why would he lie? Is he another one of Putin's agents?

Neither Stoltenberg nor Arakhamia mentioned anything else. Main issue for Russia was Ukraine's course for NATO membership.