Maybe I was reading a lot into the renovation of a school, but it was to become a NATO school, wasn't it?

And with a broke, anti-Russian government in Ukraine, how long until the US could bribe themselves to set up a small facility in Crimea... and before you know it, you are stuck with a base that you couldn't get rid of come hell or high waters...

I don't know why they haven't set something up in the Baltic states - it's probably on its way.
I know they are lobbying like MAD for Sweden and Finland to join NATO. What's happening in Ukraine right now is playing right into the hands of the NATO lobbyists. The public opinion against NATO has never been weaker - people really bought into the "dangerous" Russia and terrorism talk. Plus a few papers have openly started supporting it. I am afraid that it's only a matter of time.

They really DO want to surround Russia with their bases. All evidence supports it.
And once their bases are in your country, you are nothing but a pawn in the game! So long as your interests don't majorly conflict with the USA's - fine. But if you ever have interests that seriously conflict with the USA, you have a big fat Trojan horse, possibly with nukes on your territory. Or a neighboring country. It really spooks me. That is the reality in Continental Europe, but in Scandinavia we have been mostly free from that - but that bugs them!

In Japan they can't get the USA out of Okinawa. In Afghanistan, the USA hangs on like a leech clinging to its host against even the wishes of their own handpicked guy. They are still around in the shadows in Iraq with privately employed soldiers. They have to bribe and play dirty not to get evicted from Central Asia and many Europeans would be very happy to see the back of them.

I swear they had their eyes on Crimea. I have no doubt about it, and many commentators support it.
If NATO wasn't so darn expansionist and aggressive, Russia could stop being some kind of paranoid chess player who may or may not be 'cheating" with green men and other tricks. I think the Eastern Europeans made a mistake when they joined NATO in the general mayhem of the 1990s. They should have taken a decade to let things settle and think everything through. But they got more or less hijacked, going against the agreement between the US and Russia about NATO expansion in the East. As a result we are seeing an increasingly paranoid Russia, and it seems justified to me at least. I think NATO was just about to get its clutches into Ukraine and that they've been pulling strings for a long time to get to that point.