Re: What were they planning on doing?
They've actually admitted to doing so. The US spent enormous sums of money to ensure Yeltsin the srunken dancin bear was elected, so it could force its broken form of capitalism on the country.
Things started to go downhill quite fast from there, until Putin kicked out most of tge Russian oligarchs who didn't want to play ball with him.
These olicharchs are mostly living in London now, where a lot of people don't look to closely on how money was obtained especially if you're anti-Putin.