It was our State Department and its fellow-traveling NGOs that financed and instigated the overthrow of Ukraine's democratically elected president in February, 2014. We were naive enough to think that Russia would sit idly by while we seized its one-and-only warm water port and naval base at Sevastopol. Somehow we got the hairbrained idea that Russia would surrender control of the Black Sea and its vital southern flank to an expansionist NATO - absolute lunacy! No matter what anyone thinks of Putin, he recognized a strategic threat and acted in his country's interest. Ukraine is none of our business.
And believe it or not, I think the reason it was instigated is that Obama was deeply offended about Putin’s anti-homosexuality rules. All of this began when Putin stopped letting Russian children be adopted by American couples because we wouldn’t refuse them to homosexuals. This is when Obama was deeply offended and started using NGOs to start a 5th column in Russia to overthrow their government.
It’s been downhill ever since.
And precisely, you nailed it. State thought Russia would accept Sevastopol as a nato base. It’s crazy, but that’s what these nuts were going for. Nato up to their border, and Crimea as a nato outpost.