Obama and Putin had a falling out over something. I wonder if we will ever find out what caused it. A far cry from “tell Vladimir that after my election I will have more flexibility.”
Gay agenda
Look back at the Olympics in Sochi to see what an ass obama was over putin refusing to allow homosexual recruitment and lifestyle aggrandizement in Russia
There are three events I think set this up. One was Obama's conscious decision to pursue homosexual rights as a foreign policy priority. Rainbow flags flying over U.S. embassies really insulted Putin. The second was the toppling and the brutal murder of Qaddafi. This was Putin's holy sh*t moment and the third was Hillary's attempt to influence the Russian elections back in 2012.
In foreign policy and international affairs there are generally two outlooks: the ideological and realpolitik. Putin discerned correctly that Obama was pursuing a hyper ideological foreign policy with no regard for the facts on the ground. I think Putin, with his experience as a KGB officer during the Soviet Union, intuits that this is a dangerous course of action.
After all of this, Putin had enough. Ukraine was the final straw.