You're either purposely deflecting and looking the other way or you're genuinely blind if you refute that external entities had no hand in the regime change operation in Ukraine. John McCain, Victoria Nuland, Oleksii Arestovych, Joe Biden just to name a few who have been caught via tapped phones or on video admitting to purposely incite the populous and engineer the Maidan against the democratic government elect in Ukraine. But as stated, continue to bury your head in the sand.
Are you for real? jstor is based in the US. Of course they'll release "academic research" which is peer reviewed by pro-US individuals before publication. I wouldn't take it as ultimate truth. Just like the UN, such organisations are manipulated.
Funny how you use the Soviet Union and Russia interchangeably. They're not the same thing.
And no I don't think Russia is purely innocent. But let's put it this way, their record is far better then NATO's in-terms of interference in other countries affairs. Take Africa for Example, now having had enough of the West are ditching the dollar and taking a stand to the decades of enslavement. On the other hand, their elected leaders are welcoming China & Russia.
Even a blind man can see who the aggressor is.....
And it's those "Ukrainian People with Values" who now realise that Ukraine is now the most corrupt it has ever been under the leadership of the Clown and his pal Ihor Kolomoyskyi and they are getting nothing but misery under their visionary leadership.