Moscow: Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview broadcast Sunday 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 a state television documentary.
"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," Putin said.
Bandera was the hugely controversial anti-Soviet wartime 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 in the USSR.
"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.