It makes more sense to treat Crimea and Donbass separately. Putin undeniably gave the orders to occupy and annex Crimea, but that did not immediately trigger armed conflict in Donbass. The latter really started when Strelkov and his band occupied Slavyansk, and based on the information that we have so far, it appears to have been a private enterprise that wasn't sanctioned from the Russian government.

It took them a while to decide whether they want to back it or not, evidence to which can be found in many photos from the region from 2014 - if you look at early photos, the separatists carry a very wide assortment of arms, many of which are clearly civilian in origin (SKS and even Mosin rifles, for example), and only a few had AKs - and even those were stolen from Ukrainian army depots and such, and have the telltale early model wireframe stocks. Whereas from August of 2014 on, you start seeing most armed with standard Russian issue AK-74M (with solid folding stocks), and quite a few decked out in full sets of Russian "digital Flora" camo complete with helmets, load bearing vests, and body armor. Also, a lot more artillery and armor.

Coincidentally, that was also when Ukrainian Army and National Guard advance was stopped, and the first major setbacks (e.g. Ilovaysk) occurred.

The bigger issue might have been the settlement after the fall of the Soviet Union that kept Russia away from the Black Sea ports. It was almost a historical inevitability that Russia would seek a warm-water port. Sevastopol is the major Russian Black Sea port, and always has been.

Novorossiysk is an existing Russian warm-water port on the Black Sea, with better links to the Russian heartland. Sevastopol's chief geopolitical advantage over Novorossiysk is force projection, as it sits closer to the Turkish Straits and nearby foreign ports like Odessa, Constanta, and Varna, outside and/or wanting to be outside of Russia's sphere of influence.

> It was Putin who started the war against Ukraine by annexing Crimea.

What happened before Russia annexed Crimea? If you can answer that question honestly, you'll get to the root of that conflict. Just be honest with yourself.

It all depends on how far back you want to go. Before the annexation, there was a referendum, but before the referendum, there was de facto occupation by the "polite people" aka Russian forces with all identification tags removed (a war crime in and of itself, by the way).

Before the occupation, there was Maidan. And before Maidan, there was Yanukovich, whose achievements include stuffing the Supreme Court, and having it scrap the country's new 2004 Constitution and reverting to the old one, which, coincidentally, gave president a great deal more power than the new one.

We can go all the way back to Pereyaslav Rada if you want, but what's the point of the exercise? No matter how you slice it, Russia invaded and occupied a part of a sovereign country, and there was no genocide or other serious crimes against humanity ongoing there that could possibly justify such a thing.

If you stop at "Before the occupation, there was Maidan", then do a serious investigation of those behind the Maidan, you'll get the real answer.

Hints: John McCain went to egg them on (He was in Libya and Syria too). The US ambassador was handing out cookies to police officers. And then there's Victoria "Fuck the EU" Nuland - http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957

So what? Last I checked, there were Russian tanks in Crimea and Donbass. There were no US tanks in Kiev.

Or are you saying that tanks are an adequate response to cookies?

Whatever happened in Ukraine before the annexation of Crimea has absolutely no any relationship to Russia.

Putin once again failed in his attempt "to restore" USSR via more "peaceful" means 2nd time in a row was a bit too much for him so he snapped setting Russia on course which will likely bring the collapse of Russia similar to that of the USSR.

Wars are not a simple "he started it" deal. One could draw uncanny parallels between the current situation and the conflicting alliances during World War 2.