AFP/Reuters
Moscow
Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview broadcast yesterday that he had no regrets over Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and that it was righting a historical injustice.
“I think we did the right thing and I don’t regret a thing,” Putin said of his decision to take back the Black Sea peninsula from Ukraine, interviewed in the state television documentary The President.
“When we defend our (interests), we go to the end,” Putin said. “If people want to return to Russia and don’t want to be under the authority of neo-nazis, extreme nationalists and followers of (Stepan) Bandera, then we don’t have the right to abandon them.”
Bandera was the hugely controversial anti-Soviet war-time leader of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which both fought against and collaborated with occupying Nazi forces.
Explaining the motivation behind Crimea’s takeover, Putin said it was righting a historic wrong after Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev transferred the peninsula from Russia to Ukraine in 1954, then only a symbolic move since both were part of the Soviet Union.
“It’s not because we want to bite something off, tear it off. And not even because Crimea has a strategic significance in the region around the Black Sea,” Putin said. “It’s because it’s an element of historical justice.”
He insisted that Russia is not breaching international law in its actions in Ukraine, despite Western sanctions, as Moscow denies international accusations that it is backing pro-Russian separatists with arms and troops in east Ukraine.
“I’m deeply convinced we’re not breaking any rules of the game. That concerns our relations with Ukraine (and) the situation in Crimea,” Putin said, citing international law and the United Nations charter.
The President, marking Putin’s 15 years in power, had already been aired in Russia’s Far East.
It was scheduled to be shown in western Russia late last night.
Crimea was administered as part of Russia within the Soviet Union until it was transferred to Ukraine in 1954.
The peninsula, connected to the mainland by a narrow causeway, provides the base for the Russian navy’s Black Sea fleet.
Russia’s annexation of Crimea last year followed what it said was an “unconstitutional coup” in which street protests toppled a Moscow-allied Ukrainian president in Kiev after he ditched a deal to move closer to the European Union.
Separatist unrest then spread to eastern, Russian-speaking regions of Ukraine where fighting between Kiev’s troops and pro-Russian rebels has killed more than 6,000 people.
Putin condemned punitive sanctions imposed by the United States and European Union.
“We have witnessed such attempts during Russia’s entire history, dating back to tsarist times. This attempt to deter Russia, this policy, has been known for a long time, for centuries. There is nothing new,” RIA quoted him as saying.
Putin said Western leaders would like to see Russia begging with its “cap in hand”.
Putin: When we defend our (interests), we go to the end.
