The US has said it won't allow NATO to step back, that's because it's stopped being a defensive alliance at the end of the Cold War and became an non-sovereign political and military pact. The refusal to consider post-Soviet era Russia into the organisation and it's continued expansion in Eastern Europe and involvement in the Stans has created the sense of insecurity along Russia's borders.
The problem in Ukraine can be sorted via the Minsk II agreement. Russia isn't party to any of the arrangements and it will settle the conflict in Donbass and Luhansk so there'll be no need to protect ethnic Russians, especially those with dual nationality, and dispel concern that an escalation of the civil war might spill into Russian territory.
There is definitely room for compromise, there's no way Ukraine will be fully accepted into NATO or the EU until it sorts out its own domestic problems and that looks a long way off when it is banning opposition political parties and imprisoning TV owners for their political views. But as we are seeing, the various national leaders are playing this for domestic approval and in Zelensky's case to hold on to his fragile grip on power, while at the same time struggling to come to terms with where they might fit in the changing global order.
It doesn't show the location of the US Pacific fleet that was sailing there last week. Has it not reached yet?
