I fault the President for lying to the American people on behalf of Chevron and Shell Oil, I seriously fault him for not sending US election monitors to observe the Crimean election even though they were invited and independent election monitors from 23 different neutral countries did observe the election and declared it fair, and I fault him for trying to start another cold war on false pretenses that we can't possibly afford if we want to have any chance of an economic recovery here at home.

Crimea has been trying to secede from Ukraine ever since the day after former Soviet President Khrushchev gave Crimea to a Soviet Ukrainian State in 1954. With a couple of short exceptions. Crimea has been part of Russia or the Soviet Union for 208 of the last 231 years.

Between 1954 and 1991 Crimea belonging to Ukraine was largely symbolic, as
Ukraine was a Soviet State. Even so, a majority of Crimean residents were outraged over what Khrushchev did in 1954.

In 1991 the as the Soviet Union was in its death throes the people of Crimea
overwhelmingly voted to leave Ukraine and rejoin the Soviet Union, and early in 1992 the Crimean Parliament declared its independence from Ukraine, an was an
independent country for 3 months before the Ukrainian military stomped on their
independence.

Even so, Ukraine allowed Crimea some independence, including an independent
symbolic Parliament, an independent symbolic President, and an independent
Constitution too. In 1995 however, after the Crimean President had been advocating that Crimea rejoin Russia, he was sacked by Ukraine and the Crimean Constitution declared null and void by the Ukraine leadership.

In 2006, 2008, and 2009 after 15 or more years of the Crimean economy falling to pieces under the direction of Kiev, pro-Russian and anti-Ukrainian demonstrations were put down by Ukraine.

Last November and last January the former Ukraine President signed contracts
worth over $10 billion with Chevron and Shell to frack Russian owned natural gas fields in Ukraine and in Crimea, and then he tried to change his mind and rejoin Russian influence, which caused a huge amount of outrage in the western part of Ukraine, which is pro-western politically.