“If that were true, then you’d know how the CIA caused this.”
Sounds like a bit of ‘trolling’ going on here with this Zeeper.
On the verge of a KGB initiated political career in the municipal government of St. Petersburg, Putin obtained a doctoral degree with an academic thesis that post-Cold War Russia should seek to recover the territory and geopolitical power that the Soviet Union had. That required a return to state control of Russia's mineral wealth and recovery of Russian control over Ukraine.
Please, how do you see the CIA as responsible for such long held ambitions by Putin and the KGB?