Why didn’t staying neutral prevent Russia from occupying Crimea?
I’m only caught up to what’s been declassified, so I had to google what you’re talking about. This [0] is a good enough answer for me: CIA involvement in 2014 is a rumor at best and Russian propaganda at worst. I like knowing what my government is up to so if you have a credible source by all means…
> The claims are coming from Putin's advisers who threatened to invade Ukraine. However, there's a problem with this stance - Ukraine protesters did not need significant funds and had very few weapons, mostly self-made Molotov cocktails, and absolutely no heavy weapons or even machine guns. Their actions were fairly chaotic, but when 300,000 people pour on the streets, little can be done in response. In the meantime, no CIA agents were documented in Kiev - Russia would have advertised such evidence if there was any.
Further down:
> There was no “coup.” After about three months of protests and police violence against demonstrators, Ukrainian president Yanukovych fled the country to escape prosecution, was kicked out of his own party, and voted out of office, peacefully, by a majority of the democratically elected parliament, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. The largest block of parliamentarians that voted him out were his own party members and former party members.
[0] https://www.quora.com/Is-there-any-credible-evidence-that-Uk...
In April 2014 the CIA director was in Kiev, immediately after the coup.
Additionally, federal law prohibits diplomacy with governments who came to power via coups, yet we were engaging in diplomacy immediately after it happened.