Some facts about the "annexation" of Crimea:
1) It happened after the US orchestrated and supported a coup in Ukraine in 2013 (remember Victoria Nuland, now State Department’s Under Secretary for Policy, who 7 years ago as an Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs) identified the US sponsored Ukrainian coup leader "Yats is our man." The US sponsored coup in Ukraine precipitated the vote of the residents of Crimea that invited the Russian Federation to annex Crimea.
2) There was a 97 percent vote for integration of the region into the Russian Federation with an 83 percent voter turnout.
3) Despite US media reports to the contrary, there was no Russian military invasion of Crimea following the coup in Ukraine and before the people’s vote in Crimea. Not a shot was fired in the lead-up to the vote in Crimea. A Russian military was already in Crimea under the 60-year agreement between the Soviet Union/then Russian Federation that provided for the stationing of Russian military in Crimea as a part of its Black Sea Fleet. The Fleet’s only access to the Mediterranean is through the Black Sea ports of Sevastopol and Yalta.
4) 68 years ago in 1954, Soviet Premier and ethnic Ukrainian Nikita Khrushchev transferred control of Crimea to the Ukraine, on the 300th anniversary of Russian-Ukrainian unification.
5) After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia and Ukraine signed three agreements in 1997 governing the status of the Black Sea Fleet. The fleet was divided between Kyiv and Moscow. Russia received more of the warships and paid Ukraine’s cash-strapped government $526 million in compensation. In exchange, Kyiv also agreed to lease Crimean naval facilities to the Russian portion of the fleet for $97 million annually under a lease that was renewed in 2010 and expires in 2042.
6) Additionally, under the agreements, Russia was allowed to station a maximum of 25,000 troops, 132 armored combat vehicles and 24 pieces of artillery at its military facilities in Crimea. As a part of these agreements, Russian military forces were required to “respect the sovereignty of Ukraine, honor its legislation and preclude interference in the internal affairs of Ukraine.”
7) The US and NATO countries responded with strong sanctions to the Crimea annexation. Even more sanctions have been placed on the Russian Federation over the separatist movement in the Donbass eastern area of Ukraine by ethnic Russians who feel their heritage is not respected by the Ukrainian government including stopping teaching of Russian in schools and lack of resources for their region, the same complaints that residents of Crimea had.
8) 125,000 Russian military personnel have been deployed on the border of Ukraine in a move by Russian Federation as a part of its very public demand that NATO not recruit membership of Ukraine. Russia has complained for decades that the agreement of President George H.W. Bush and Russian President Gorbahev that NATO would not allow former Warsaw Pact countries that neighbor Russian into NATO has been violated with the admittance.
9) In 1999 Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary, and in 2004 Romania, Bulgaria , Slovakia, Slovenia, and the Baltic countries of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania joined NATO. The most recent member states to be added to NATO are Montenegro in 2017 and North Macedonia in 2020. Only Belarus, Ukraine, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia and Serbia of the former Warsaw Pact countries are NOT members of NATO.
10) Not all members of NATO are onboard the US confrontation with Russia. As 40 percent of the heating gas for Europe comes from Russia through Ukraine, European leaders are rightfully worried about a chilly local reaction when their homes get chilly without heat.
11) The US has responded to the Russian demand that Ukraine not become a member of NATO with a strident NO, has sent a dramatic and public increase in weapons to Ukraine and has put 8,500 US military on high alert.
12) The US politicians, think-tank pundits and government war makers have created a war atmosphere on many fronts. The US military is stretched to the point that the possibility, if not probability, of an incident/accident occurring that can set off a chain of events that will be disastrous for the world is explosively high.