There's a lot of legwork you have to go to to prove Yanukovych was a "Russian puppet." He sided with the loan that didn't require privatizing Ukraine's safety nets and selling them to the west.

Further, I'm not trying to find excuses for war, but explanations for why it happened. Again, Russia doesn't give a shit about plunder. They just want Kiev to stop suppressing ethnic Russians and for there to be a better buffer along with NATO neutrality. They aren't after financial domination or extraction.