https://fair.org/home/what-you-should-really-know-about-ukraine/

As political turmoil engulfed the country in the leadup to 2014, the US was fueling anti-government sentiment through mechanisms like USAID and National Endowment for Democracy (NED), just as they had done in 2004. In December 2013, Nuland, assistant secretary of state for European affairs and a long-time regime change advocate, said that the US government had spent $5 billion promoting “democracy” in Ukraine since 1991. The money went toward supporting “senior officials in the Ukraine government…[members of] the business community as well as opposition civil society” who agree with US goals.

On February 6, 2014, as the anti-government protests were intensifying, an anonymous party (assumed by many to be Russia) leaked a call between Assistant Secretary of State Nuland and US ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt. The two officials discussed which opposition officials would staff a prospective new government, agreeing that Arseniy Yatsenyuk—Nuland referred to him by the nickname “Yats”—should be in charge. It was also agreed that someone “high profile” be brought in to push things along. That someone was Joe Biden.

Weeks later, on February 22, after a massacre by suspicious snipers brought tensions to a head, the Ukrainian parliament quickly removed Yanukovych from office in a constitutionally questionable maneuver. Yanukovych then fled the country, calling the overthrow a coup. On February 27, Yatsenyuk became prime minister.

The Washington-backed opposition that toppled the government was fueled by far-right and openly Nazi elements like the Right Sector. One far-right group that grew out of the protests was the Azov Battalion, a paramilitary militia of neo-Nazi extremists. Their leaders made up the vanguard of the anti-Yanukovych protests, and even spoke at opposition events in the Maidan alongside US regime change advocates like McCain and Nuland.

Edit: While I'm pilling here's the "unprovoked, illegal invasion" pill: Ukraine regime forces were massed on the contact line in the Donbas and intensified their shelling starting on February 16, 2022. This is incidentally why Russia was able to take so much territory so quickly with a relatively small force in the first weeks: because the Ukrainian forces were NOT in defensive positions along the border with Russia preparing for an invasion, they were in offensive positions along the contact line against their own compatriots, who until recently were trying to achieve local autonomy within Ukraine rather than independence or annexation to Russia.

https://patrickarmstrong.ca/2022/03/18/what-i-got-wrong-and-why/

https://www.thepostil.com/the-military-situation-in-the-ukraine/

https://www.osce.org/ukraine-smm/reports?page=3

Edit 2: I just found this today because Christopher Black was sitting next to Aaron Mate at the UN, it was literally a NATO sniper team

https://christopher-black.com/the-maidan-massacre-us-army-orders-sow-chaos/

In the November 16 article in the Italian journal Il Giornale, and repeated on Italian TV Canale 5, journalist Gian Micalessin revealed that 3 Georgians, all trained army snipers, and with links to Mikheil Saakashvili and Georgian security forces were ordered to travel to Kiev from Tbilisi during the Maidan events. It is two of these men that are now being called to testify in Kiev.

On the 18th of February they were given weapons and two of them took up positions at the Hotel Ukraina overlooking Maidan Square while the third was positioned in the Conservatory. Other snipers were positioned in other buildings to fire into the square. Prior to that they met with, among other people, an American soldier in uniform, a claimed “former” member of the US Army’s 101st Airborne Division, who gave them orders on what to do, which it turned out to be was to shoot into Maidan Square randomly targeting people, protestors and police alike, to create fear and confusion, to implicate the government forces as the shooters, to create the chaos necessary in order to undermine the government of President Yanukovych, who fled shortly after the event realising his own life was in danger. The name of the American soldier, or the alias he used, was Brian Christopher Boyenger. He showed up later as an adviser to the Ukrainian Georgian Legion. One of the snipers stated,

“Once, I guess around February 15, Mamulashvili personally visited our tent. There was another guy with him wearing a uniform. Mamulashvili introduced him to us and told us he was an American military guy and will be our instructor.”