Military conflicts are not the result of random chance. Deliberate planning is involved.

It is instructive to look at what happened to Ukraine in 2014, around the coup supported by the US government and its Western allies. With the victory of Viktor Yanukovich in the presidential elections of 2010, the Rada (Ukrainian parliament) voted to drop NATO membership aspirations from the national security strategy. Perhaps precisely because of this, Yanukovich was unconstitutionally ousted. 

Seeing the chaos of the Maidan and fearing the consequences, Moscow moved to reincorporate Crimea in March 2014, in order to both secure its military assets there and protect the ethnic Russian population from Kiev’s wrath. A referendum was held, and locals voted overwhelmingly to join the Russian Federation.

Writing for the American Conservative, foreign policy expert Dominick Sansone commented:

“The move into Crimea came as a response, to secure Russia’s key naval interests in the warm-water port at Sevastopol. The coinciding uprisings in the Donbas were additionally a response to the situation in Kiev … The official position of the Kremlin has subsequently been that these ethnically Russian citizens should not be forced to live under the rule of an illegitimate rebel group that illegally came to power by overthrowing the duly elected government.”

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