That's exactly
the point! Russia did nothing when former Warsaw Pact members Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania joined NATO. It likewise did nothing when former Soviet Republican Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia all did that same. Which shows this has nothing to do with NATO.
When Russia grabbed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, there was no prospective NATO membership on the table. Russia grabbed it anyway simply because it wanted Crimea. And when Russia went into South Ossetia in 2008, there likewise had been zero change in the non-relationship between Georgia and NATO. NATO membership is the red herring -- the excuse Putin uses to justify his military adventurism.
As for the rest of it
While it may be true that the country was not going to be officially admitted into NATO any time soon,
Full stop. That is literally the only point that matters in terms of the alleged provocation. And the rather limited weapons that had entered Ukraine only did so after Russia and Putin's little green men grabbed Crimea in 2014. I mean, that's a joke of an argument. "We seized your most important port from your incompetent military in 2014, and the fact that you are now trying to strengthen your military justifies us grabbing the rest of your puny country."
The only part of what you said that raises a legitimate issue is this:
He expressed concern that NATO could eventually use the Ukrainian territory to deploy missiles capable of reaching Russia’s command centers in just five minutes.
Fine. If Putin had said "I need a guarantee that NATO will not put nuclear weapons in Ukraine", I think that's a legitimate concern that could have been addressed as a prerequisite to Ukraine joining NATO. I'd even have listened to Russian concerns about large scale military operations by NATO countries in Ukraine. Limits on numbers, or maybe geographic limits on exercises east of the Dnieper, may have been reasonable. But that's not what he was demanding. He wanted no NATO membership of any kind, and that was 100% unreasonable for a country that already had been invaded once by Russia.
If Putin’s concern is the west arming and moving missiles into Ukraine, what is the difference between NATO membership and “defacto” NATO membership?
They wanted them to be neutral so they wouldn’t do the things that would lead to either membership or defacto membership such as building up militarily and hosting missiles.
Q - Why was that something that we couldn’t live with?
A - Because the globalist oligarchs don’t get wealthy and powerful off of that.