A "Russian Asset" yet Putin invaded Crimea when Obama was president. Also invaded Ukraine when Biden was president. I wonder what the pattern is.
Also perhaps "when I have an asset in the White House, I should not undermine his local image with a power struggle".
Then while you're specifically considering Crimea, consider which US president simply said "Oh yeah, Crimea is russian":
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/albertonardelli/trump-r...
(and then "but that's Obama's fault" instead of IDK, Russia's).
And then there's a whole host of other weirdly pro-Russian policies:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/09/03/belarus-election-fraud-...
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/humanrights/2019/02/05/russias-new-s...
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-syria-security-russia/rus...
Not to mention lots of known Trump-Russia connections:
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-flynn-comey-...
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/342509-new-book-...
http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2017/03/politics/trump-putin-...
https://theintercept.com/2017/07/14/just-six-days-after-trum...
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/28/us/politics/donald-trump-...
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/15/was-there-a-co...
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/ar...
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/article135187364.ht...
That strategic decision cannot be explained by your theory, discredited media stories notwithstanding.
If Ukraine was THE thorn in the Kremlin's side... vs one point in a constellation of concerns including undermining NATO [0], weakening the EU [1], weakening the US, affirming nationalist authoritarianism vs social democracy, etc etc.
> it would have been rational for Russia to stabilize the issue with an invasion
If invasions didn't have any risks and consequences (even absent US intervention). And at this point, it sure looks like those risks and consequences are on full display even if we only look at the military action.
Meanwhile 3 years ago it actually looked plausible that the US could be forced into having to sacrifice either aid to Ukraine or the candidate that eventually beat Trump.
> discredited media stories notwithstanding.
"discredited" needs citation. Especially considering that the introductory set of articles I linked to above isn't even the short list.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/03/us/politics/trump-nato-wi... [1] https://france-amerique.com/en/trump-has-done-everything-he-...