The Obama government has taken a Cold War stand on the crisis in Ukraine. The White House had warned Russia not to intervene and ordered U.S. military precautions even as the Europeans seemed to have matters well in hand.
So, the events culminating in the ouster of Ukraine's president must have appeared to Russia as the second risky and provocative effort in a decade to bring Ukraine into the Western camp, wrenching it away from its historical ties to Russia.
The initial American effort to get Ukraine into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), following the Orange Revolution (2004-2005) and its turbulent aftermath, broke assurances given Mikhail Gorbachev when the Berlin Wall came down, and amounted to an effort to detach a part of historical Russia, with strong and lasting cultural and linguistic ties to that country, and place it under American military command. This was foolhardy, and disastrous to U.S.-Russian relations.