It's hard to see how those activities could be compatible with NATO membership. It would simply have provided Russia with security guarantees while providing cover for it to cause as much trouble as it wanted.
But ok, lets imaging you are right. So you are saying that, it is NATO fault that Russian invades Ukraine simply because they didn't take Russia into NATO? Right?
Of course, the formal application doesn't exist, since countries of that size and importance usually don't apply officially to something unless they already have an agreement that it's just a formality. They would just look silly if the applied and got rejection.
NATO is made to promote democratic values, Putin runs a dictatorship, how does that work?
In a world where Russia also sought to promote free democracies and started with itself, then Russia being in NATO would make sense.
Central Asian Islamic extremists?
> NATO is made to promote democratic values, Putin runs a dictatorship, how does that work?
Russia wasn't clearly a dictatorship when it was admitted to the Partnership for Peace, or when Putin wanted direct admission to NATO without the usual accession process, though, yeah, it is now.
Someone who was unreasonably optimistic might think NATO membership would have mellowed Putin rather than just letting him jam up the alliances consensus-based processes.