Russia's actions in the Crimea are illegal under any pretext, but I wonder who "the people" were who participated in the Ukrainian demonstrations. True patriots of liberty, non affiliated anarchists, or JBT's from Russia? The events that precipitated the Crimean takeover seemed to be too well orchestrated.
The notion the the pro-Russian government of Ukraine would have snipers shooting at the anti-Russian opposition protestors during the Olympics doesn’t make any sense.
The Sochi Olympics were meant to be a showcase for Vladimir Putin’s Russia with prisoners released ahead of it and so on.
Any crackdown on those protestors would have come after the Olympics, not during.
The whole sequence of events from the snipers on smells fishy.
The rapid overthrow of the presidency in violation of an agreement between the protestors and the pro-Russian government to allow him to stay in office for the rest of this year upset the apple cart completely.
That made Russian intervention inevitable.