Yeah, I´ve suspected this for a long time. With Crimea and Donbass gone, there´s really nothing left of interest for U.S./NATO as regards the first and German industrial interests regarding the second. They had very high hopes of dominating Russia´s southern flank and also of a new Czechia in the east. But all they got was a very expensive headache. Russia only needs to wait, eventually they´ll come hat in hand and ask for her help in sorting this mess.
One interest of the US still remains: Odessa. With Crimea gone, US shifted its aspiration of creating a military base in Odessa. There's been reports of foreign military surveyors i the area. One hope is that the price tag for it may outweigh the benefit of having it.
Yeah, that´s true. Maybe that´s supposed to be something to fall back on. But that can´t replace Crimea and Sevastopol. I think that was the big idea from the start in the undermining of the Yanokuvych government.. Which also made me suspicious of the Russians back there. After all the coup gave them the perfect opportunity to reunite with Crimea. And that takeover was such a masterful and flawless operation. It must have been prepared. I think they had their hand in the coup in some ways. They are extremely dangerous, strategically speaking, and always underestimated.
Russia may have had a plan for Crimea for the eventuality of a violent coup in Ukraine (it was pretty obvious which way the things were blowing already in November 2013), but I hardly doubt Russia had any hand in organising the coup - for one it's simply not the Russian way of doing things, for the other, there were altogether too many American officials and puppets (Saakashvili's snipers) in the picture. If one postulates that Russia had a hand in the coup, then one also follow through with the logical conclusion that Russia runs the American foreign policy and has Biden, Nuland, Kerry, Obama on the payroll, which is unlikely.
I don´t think they had a hand in organizing the coup itself but once it got going they may have had a hand in steering events to some extent. I´m sure they had their agents all over the place and solid contacts and still have. It´s a very long history to build relationships.
In any event; this gave them back their beloved Crimea. That´s worth a whole lot and also essential for their national security. And much of Ukraine will probably fall into their lap later if they want it. Those nazis and weirdos in Kiev are no danger to Russia. It´ll pass.
