Moscow was so worried it would be retaliated against at the height of last year's Ukrainian crisis on the Crimean Peninsula that it prepared to arm its nuclear weapons, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a documentary that aired on Russian state television Sunday.
"We were ready to do this ... [Crimea] is our historical territory. Russian people live there. They were in danger. We cannot abandon them," Putin said, reported The Independent.
A year ago, months of protests in Ukraine culminated in the ousting of then-President Viktor Yanukovych. A popularly-backed Crimean secession referendum then saw Russia absorb Crimea.
Many in the West denounced the referendum as illegitimate, according to The Associated Press, but Putin said in the documentary that he had called for a "closed opinion poll" to determine how Crimeans felt about rejoining Russia. No details were given as to how the survey was conducted, but Putin said "it became clear that 75 percent of the general population desired to join Russia," AP reported.
Putin described how he ordered Russian forces to escort Yanukovych from Kiev to Russia because those who benefited from the "armed coup" also planned on assassinating him.
"I invited the heads of our special services, the Defense Ministry and ordered them to protect the life of the Ukrainian president," he said. "Otherwise he would have been killed."
Putin said in the documentary that Russia "never thought about severing Crimea from Ukraine until the moment that these events began, the government overthrow," alleging that Yanukovych was ousted by U.S.-led coup.
The coup was "masterminded by our American friends," Putin said as he described how Washington tried to "trick" the world into thinking the regime change was "supported mostly by the Europeans," the Independent reported.
"They helped training the nationalists, their armed groups, in Western Ukraine, in Poland and to some extent in Lithuania. They facilitated the armed coup," he continued.
Putin also revisited a previously disclosed admission which he initially denied: that he had sent well-armed unmarked forces to Crimea to help with its transition back into Russia. He said in the documentary that he ordered the defense ministry to send military intelligence special forces, marines and paratroopers "under the cover of strengthening the protection of our military facilities," reported AP.
