From the New York Times:

Moscow Was Urged to Annex Crimea Before Ukraine President’s Fall, Report Says By NEIL MacFARQUHAR FEB. 25, 2015 MOSCOW — The Kremlin was advised to annex Crimea and a large swath of southeastern Ukraine weeks before the Ukrainian government fell, a Russian newspaper reported on Wednesday, citing what it said was a memo that was presumably presented to the presidential administration. Russia has long contended that it acted without premeditation in Crimea, and was only seeking to protect Russian speakers who it said were under threat of attack, and to stave off what it suspected was an attempt by NATO to move its forces into the region. But a report in Novaya Gazeta, one of the few independent voices still publishing in Russia, said that well before

well, 17 days before

the Ukrainian government fell in February 2014, the memo the newspaper had obtained advised the Kremlin to adopt the policy it has since pursued in Ukraine. The memo appears to have been drafted under the auspices of a conservative oligarch later suspected of funding the separatists, the report said. The memo lays out what it says is the inevitable disintegration of Ukraine and suggests a series of logistical steps that Russia should take to make sure it remains in control of the situation, steps not far off from what actually occurred. As early as Feb. 4, 2014, well before President Viktor F. Yanukovych resigned, on Feb. 21, the memo predicted his overthrow and suggested that Russia use the European Union’s own rules on autonomous areas to try to bind both Crimea and eastern Ukraine to Russia.

You keep using the term “well before;” I’m not sure it means what you think it means.

Dimtry S. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, suggested that the memo was a hoax. “It seems like a fake,” he said.

I find more implausible the implication of this article that the Kremlin did not have a contingency plan for Crimea and Eastern Ukraine until early February 2014.

Consider, by way of contrast, America’s contingency plan for conquering Canada all the way to the Arctic Ocean:

War Plan Red

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Joint Army and Navy Basic War Plan Red was a war plan created by the United States Army and Navy in the late 1920s and early 1930s to estimate the requirements for a hypothetical war with Great Britain (the “Red” forces)…. War Plan Red was developed by the United States Army following the 1927 Geneva Naval Conference and approved in May 1930 by the Secretary of War and the Secretary of Navy and updated in 1934–35. In 1939 on the outbreak of World War II and Britain’s war against Nazi Germany, a decision was taken that no further planning was required but that the plan be retained.[3] War Plan Red was not declassified until 1974. … When War Plan Red was declassified in 1974, it caused a stir in American-Canadian relations because Canada, codenamed “Crimson” in the plan, was to have been the principal target of American forces.[2] War Plan Red first set out a description of Canada’s geography, military resources, and transportation, and went on to evaluate a series of possible pre-emptive American campaigns to invade Canada in several areas and occupy key ports and railways before British troops could provide reinforcement to the Canadians – the assumption being that Britain would use Canada as a staging point. The idea was that the American attacks on Canada would prevent Britain from using Canadian resources, ports, or airbases.[2] A key move was a joint US army-navy attack to capture the port city of Halifax, cutting off the Canadians from their British allies. Their next objective was to “seize Canadian Power Plants near Niagara Falls”[5] This was to be followed by a full-scale invasion on three fronts: From Vermont to take Montreal and Quebec, from North Dakota to take over the railhead at Winnipeg, and from the Midwest to capture the strategic nickel mines of Ontario. In parallel, the U.S. Navy was to seize the Great Lakes and blockade Canada’s Atlantic and Pacific ports.[2]

Here’s an analogy: The coal and steel works of Eastern Ukraine are kind of like what southern Ontario across from Detroit has become under NAFTA: an integral part of the North American economy. If a corrupt Canadian government in Ottawa were overthrown by Francophone rioters bused in from Montreal, and then the new Canadian government announced it was joining the EU trade bloc under French sponsorship, Washington would be peeved.

Perhaps Victoria Nuland, the State Department’s official in charge of Ukraine strategy, should have anticipated this February 2014 Russian contingency plan before encouraging the overthrow of the elected government in Kiev in December 2013?

Over the last 500 years, Russia didn’t get to be the biggest country in the world in terms of land by passively accepting other countries’ advances in what it considers its sphere of influence. The Muscovite strategy ever since throwing off the Mongol Yoke has been to be the biggest bully on the block.

Baiting the Russian bear makes sense if you have a highly plausible plan about how you are going to win. But how many Americans were willing to Die for Donetsk?

I don’t know, but I’m guessing the Obama Administration figured they could take down Putin nonviolently two months ago by getting the Saudis to flood the world with oil, like in 1986. That’s cool with me, especially because I like filling my tank for less money. But now gasoline is back up over $3 per gallon at my local ARCO, so I guess the Saudis have bailed.

And yet Nuland still has her job despite the disaster her policy engendered. The meta-disaster is that the Crimean Job changed the post-WWII assumption that only Israel gets to get bigger via right of conquest. That assumption that right of conquest was obsolete was a good thing.