It was a land grab, by the USA and its puppet regimes

Putin was the most pro-Western leader in Russia since Peter the Great. After the collapse of the Soviet Union a cabal of internationally connected “Russian” oligarchs became fabulously wealthy at the expense of ordinary Russians. Greedy Americans and Europeans were envious of Russia’s vast natural resources and they wanted their share of the wealth, like the “Russian” oligarchs. Ukraine was built up militarily by the West in order to attack Russia and force regime change in Russia so that Russian natural resources could be extracted by greedy foreign wannabe oligarchs.