“You may say that [Yanukovych] was thrown out of office for good reason. There are allegations against him that he was corrupt, there are allegations against him that he used the military against his own people to stay in power. But the fact is that from the perspective of the Crimeans, their leader, the one that they placed in charge of their country, was thrown out of power,” Grayson said. “So it should come as no surprise … that the Crimeans had had enough, and they wanted to leave this artificial entity called the Ukraine.”

“Now, in fact, the Russians did assist, they assisted by disarming the local Ukrainian army and navy. That’s what they did. They did it virtually bloodlessly. They did this so that the Ukrainian army and navy could not interfere with the referendum that was held. That’s the fact of the matter,” Grayson said.