There's nothing illegal about traveling to Crimea, only warnings from the US state department and maybe some other western nations.
From the Russian perspective, the Crimean territory is theirs. If you have valid Russian travel documents, you can enter. From the Ukrainian perspective, the Crimean territory is theirs and US citizens can spend up to an entire year in Ukraine visa-free.
Its not illegal border crossing either because there is de facto no border there.
A dejure argument doesn't make sense because no matter which side of the argument you take, crossing into crimea isn't on its own illegal. At worst you're supposed to get a visa, but Ukraine has a pretty open policy so that is generally not required for tourism under 90 days.
Presumably if you're coming from Russia you already have a visa to be in Russia too