The annexation of Crimea occurred immediately after the 2014 revolution.

The west made their move and Russia responded.

That's not how the events unfolded. Russians pressured Ukrainian president to block a very favorable trade deal with the EU that had already received overwhelming support and passed the parliament. The general public responded with massive protests, Ukrainian president mishandled the situation and gave order to shoot at protesters, protests grew even larger in response, and the president eventually fled to Russia.

Russians used the time of internal turmoil as an opportunity to invade Crimea and Eastern Ukraine to further their interest of expanding Russia to the extent of the Soviet Union.

You don't need to construct elaborate conspiracy theories about CIA involvement, when Ukrainians were mad as hell over losing the opportunity to see their income sharply rise from open trade with the EU, like everyone else in Eastern Europe before them had seen.

The US agencies involvement in such events is a mundane obvious fact at this point. It would be a conspiracy theory for there NOT to be any involvement by the US in such a critical sequence of events against one of their major adversaries. That is a very naive perspective.

https://www.cato.org/commentary/americas-ukraine-hypocrisy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...

Today there is a proxy war between the US and Russia in Ukraine. $100B of US military backing so far, and it's not over yet.

None of this refutes what I wrote.

If you're in the mood to read Wikipedia, then:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_involvement_in_regime_c...

Looking at the amount of brown color on the map, you may notice that Russia has invaded all their neighbours at one point or another.

Yes we all know about the USSR and its vast expansion post WW2. The USSR no longer exists. Russia is involved in regime change in Ukraine right now, today. But it's obviously not a covert operation.