The US encouraged, supported, funded, armed and trained the nationalists to beat down the minorities which just happened to include the russians.
Statecraft 101 aims to sow division and hatred within a target country and destabilise it. When Nuland returned to office post trump early 2021 the first thing she did was visit Kiev and within a month Zelensky announced they were going to retake Crimea militarily, August they have a NATO meeting talking about Ukraines path to NATO then everyone acts so surprised that Russia responded with an attempt at a first move to protect their interest.
March 2022 they got close to securing a peace deal that kept the 2014 borders intact and secured Ukraine neutrality.
Zelensky was cornered and chose to live. He avoided nationalist anger at him caving and avoided US three letter agency action (to eliminate him too) and went with BoJo recommendation and took the blue pill to believe they could defeat the weak incompetent Russians and their tiny force if they mobilised everyone in Ukraine and had NATO supply the necessary weapons and money.
