The longstanding perspective in the Russian Federation is that the legitimate aftermath of the Cold War was overthrown when the NATO was extended to the RF and the natural allies (as they viewed them) were turned away from RF though the "color-coded revolutions". Indeed, GHW Bush reportedly promised to the soviets that if they allow the Soviet Union to fall apart, the West would not take a military advantage of it, and that promise was violated if not to the letter then in spirit. Further, their perspective is that all these Arab Spring turmoil is engineered out of the State Department through "media technologies", Soros money, NGO Trojan horses, etc.
That is Putin's perspective.
However:
1. The aggression in Crimea shows that RF remains a real threat to the national integrity of at least the countries where there is an ethnic Russian minority. The Balt states, Poland, Hungary, Czecho(+)slovakia, the Caucasus limitrophes acted on the knowledge of the lingering Soviet mentality when they signed for NATO or otherwise opted for the American geopolitical orbit. There was no formal repudiation of Sovietism in the RF, therefore there was no reason for RF's neighbors to expect changed behavior from RF.
2. The expansion of NATO, wise or not, was respecting the established borders and done with some reluctance in response to democratically elected governments' requests. NATO was not taking advantage of a fluid situation, flying in paratroopers with no insignia and manufacturing snap decisions in a parliament without quorum while the parliament building was under siege.
3. The RF has a natural interest to protect ethnic Russians caught abroad due to the USSR's breakup. RF, however had 20 years to, for example, set up an automatic citizenship for the Russian refugees or do diplomatic demarches on their behalf. None of the tender concern for the ethnic Russians in the limitrophes was in evidence for 20 years. Putin, clearly, wanted them to be where they are as a fifth column of a future invasion. Now we have the invasion.
4. America can heat up various revolutions when we like it because in most countries there is plenty of people, typically, the educated class, that like us and share our values. That Putin has not built an image or Russia that is attractive to many is not the US fault, it is again, the fault of the conscious orientation in RF toward its imperial past.
The Muslim immigrant path cannot be Putin's concern; he has plenty of Muslims inside the RF who don't need a visa to move to a big historically Russian city such as Moscow and set up camp there. The opposition was asking to at least set up a vise regime with Caucasus, Central Asia and Tatarstan for years. The answer was Putin's rhetoric of Russia being a multiethnic state and Eurasianism, while streets of Moscow began to resemble Cairo with uncontrollable immigration.
Maidan had solid popular support: no anti-Maidan was ever able to gather steam even in the East. Ukraine has plenty of grievance without the State Department heating it up. I finish with this quote, from my other recent thread:
For what Ukraine does not like Yanukovych? Why it is that of anyone of his predecessors, the beams of nationwide hatred crossed on him? The reasons are many.[...]
For style of government, full of contempt for the people that goes back to the Russian autocratic tradition.
[...]
For raiding [property]. [...] Over the past two years, Ukrainians caved new fines, taxes and other forms of obtaining money. And this despite the constant increase in prices and chronic debts on wages. [...]
[...]
Today, when people are protesting not only in the west and center of the country, but also in the south-east, in Nikolaev, I remember how the powers[?] of Nikolaev raped and burned alive a girl from a poor family Oksana Makar. Only mass protests forced the authorities to put criminals in jail.
I remember how there in the Mykolayiv region, in the village Vradievka, people took by storm the police department, where barricaded maniacs in uniform. They raped and killed the girls on the streets of the village with a hammer, just out of boredom. And they were bored because they could afford all - because they were covered by the regional police department and the prosecutor's office, where they had to take back monthly money from villagers robbed under any pretext. They had a plan for the collection of tribute.
I remember Vitaly Zaporozhec from Brovars'ke region of Kyiv county, -- he received 14 years for the murder of a rural district policemen. According to neighbors, that cop terrorized the whole village, police authorities did not respond to complaints. Since 2012, for the entire area Zaporozhec is a true hero
I remember the struggle with drug dealers from Nezhin, when, after the promulgation of the video confessions of the "pushers" at the press conference, the activists were thrown into prison by the mafia law enforcement that covered for the pushers. The drug dealers then were released.
I remember the excitement in the grocery market "Shlyakh" in Svyatoshynskyi district of Kiev, where police "cover" suddenly raised requisitions from $ 1,000 to $ 1,500 a month, and when the traders refused to pay, announced the market "illegal" and began to strip market, beating women . And that was the first time they showed themselves - those who are now called "Right sector." Powered nationalists expelled traders "elements" of the market, and then stormed the police station and Sviatoshynskyi and gave it a great pogrom.
I remember teacher Valentina Moskalenko, whom the bandits, called now "titushki" was pressed in front of the whole country and in full police nonintervention to sign over her father's house in the center of Kiev because the house lot was liked by a deputy from the Party of Regions.
Last July, the political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko noted that the population of Ukraine lost the fear of the police. At the same time, sociologists said that Kiev was ready for revolution. "Tension has grown in society so that people can easily pick up on any action, - said at the time member of" Liberty "Andrew Mohnik. - And it will not be singing Maidan, as in 2004, it can develop into something more. Where would it flash, is difficult to predict." And now it has flashed.
When today I hear the mutterings from the Yanukovych environment that it is all the machinations of external forces, I want to say: "Look in the mirror. You are not only monsters, but also fools."
Russian source of quote
Sustaining Ukraine's breakthrough: EU expertise and markets are essential [Soros].
Well, yes. You have detailed what I’d say more briefly: An external agent or agents is generally not going to have success starting a “hot” revolution unless a gov’t is treating its citizens very badly, and in that case, usually the revolution will come eventually, anyway. Or at least the seeds are there. Obviously, outside agents can affect the outcome: Gaddafi would have crushed the uprising in Libya had not the West intervened, but that intervention became essentially an open war against Gaddafi, much different than the situations in either Egypt, Syria, or the Ukraine (at least so far.)
It sort of amazes me that a substantial number of Freepers are ignorant, apparently, of the Ukraine’s history of brutal repression by outside actors, plus its own corrupt governments, yet the people (for the most part) are of a cultural background that would lead them to yearn for better. Put another way, some Freepers do not seem to understand the desire of oppressed others to be free?