He's a secular dictator that controlled his country just fine before the Saudis and Gulf States started funneling weapons to groups to topple him. I think you'd agree that even stable countries would be destabilized by that. While the "Arab Spring" pro-democracy uprising was likely spontaneous, the guys who started fighting didn't get all their weapons from army bases. If you believe that, you should then admit that the pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine are a spontaneous movement too.