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Maybe. But this isn't just about the Crimea.
Why do you assume it's necessarily laughable?
As far as I can tell, the Ukrainian army has been preparing, with NATO support, since the outbreak of the Donbass conflict for a best-case scenario that is essentially the copy of Operation Storm in 1995, when the Croatians, with US assistance, swiftly regained the territory of Krajina from Serbian control, in a successful military operation against an already weakened enemy in positions difficult to hold. This explains the preparations they have slowly but surely made since 2014, and - in my view - the very obvious reluctance they and their American supporters have shown to have the entire Donbass crisis resolved diplomatically one way or another, through a ceasefire or a creation of a DMZ, akin to Korea or Vietnam etc.
This isn't a pipe dream by any stretch. Putin was already old, with no successor either named or at least with a clear chance to succeed, ruling a demographically contracting, stagnant nation. Based on what we can conclude from Russian history, it has been entirely logical for years to assume that whoever succeeds Putin (assuming there's a peaceful transition of power in the first place) will be a weak-handed reformer whose economic policies ultimately fail (like those of Khrushchev or Gorbachev) while trying to ease tensions with NATO, which eventually make him look naive and weak. As far as I know, multiple historians have argued that the Russian state does traditionally have a significant weakness, namely that it's prone to collapse if central rule is weak, or is perceived to be weak, because the institutions of the state are themselves weak and lacking innate authority/legitimacy.
In other words, the Ukrainians simply needed to wait. Time was on their side. After all, can anyone picture a destabilized and economically collapsing Russian state, ruled by a reformer who is essentially a laughingstock, successfully mounting a military operation to repel a concentrated Ukrainian attack on the Donbass separatists? I think not. And if the Donbass folds, the Crimea is also very likely to follow.
This is the likely future scenario the Russian regime has been facing since 2014.
Yeah, sure. But what if US has given Ukraine HIMARS, with which you can literally snipe bunkers from 100 km away.
Any static defensive line is dead meat, unless you use AA missiles to shoot down incoming rounds.
But you can only afford that for critical targets, as otherwise it's a fool's game because each missile costs about the same as a GMLRS (what HIMARS fires), and US empire is far richer.
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These points are all logical and valid. On the other hand, I'm sure you could've made similarly logical and valid arguments in 1994 about the Chechen insurgency having zero chance of success, or the *Kursk *never suffering a fatal accident etc. And we had all the reasons say, 3 years ago to think that the Afghan Army, despite all its flaws, can surely defend at least Kabul in the foreseeable future. Right? But in the real world, demoralized armies can fall apart to an extent that most people cannot even imagine.
Yes, he could have. And he probably does. Toyotomi Hideyoshi made elaborate plans as well. But nobody can control events from his grave. But what reason does any Russian ruler have to trust his successor to continue a policy line he (in this case, Putin) envisions for the future? Why would he be sure that the regime even wants to preserve his legacy?
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