Russia Ukraine war, page-27

"Its potential loss following the US-backed ousting of the President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014 was widely seen as one of the primary motivators in Russia annexing the militarily strategic peninsula."

Yep, if the US hadn't meddled in Ukraine affairs and arranged the ousting of president Yanukovych none of this would have happened.
There was no way that Russia was going to give up it's only warm water naval base at Sevastopol in Crimea and would have gone to war to protect it. The West backed down.

Who can forget the "#### the EU" comment that Victoria Nuland said to Geoffrey Pyatt, then United States Ambassador to Ukraine, as they were discussing who they were going to install in place of Yanukovych. Yatsenyuk, fondly referred to as "Yats", got the nod. It was fairly clear in the secret recording that Nuland had the upper hand.

Victoria Nuland is married to Robert Kagan who was a member of PNAC (the project for the new American century). I guess they didn't expect it would be China's century.

The recorded conversation (4:10 mins):



Short version with some commentary (1:34 mins):