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[sludgehound]

Putin?: Crimea for Poland & Lithuania?

Assuming Putin still around, here he's acting like US use of Poland & Lithuania to help train Ukraine caused his actions. Trade off? Sounds like him saying I'll ignore those two for now but remember I really still do want those two in time.

7:30pm ET March 15, 2015
MOSCOW -- Vladimir Putin said he prepared to put Russia's nuclear forces on alert ahead of Crimea's annexation from neighboring Ukraine last year and ordered his inner circle to retake the peninsula days before any proclamation of a local referendum.
The Russian president made the comments in a prerecorded interview during a documentary, "Crimea: The Road to the Motherland," aired on state television Sunday. It came a day before the one-year anniversary of the Russia -backed referendum on the peninsula, a vote the U.S., Ukraine and Europe denounced as illegal.
The Kremlin presented that vote as the basis for Russia to reclaim the land.
The documentary presented Crimea's annexation as a heroic emancipation of the peninsula from an onslaught of Ukrainian extremists trained by U.S. "puppeteers." The peninsula's annexation last year helped drive the Russian leader's popularity to all-time highs at home, but led to the worst divide between the West and Russia since the days of the Cold War.
"Our advantage--you know what it was?" Mr. Putin said. "It was that I did this myself. It's not that I was doing everything so correctly, but that when heads of state direct something, it's easier for those working to carry it out."
In the run-up to the annexation, Mr. Putin said he readied for the "most unfavorable developments" and even prepared to put Russia's nuclear forces on alert. "We were ready to do it," the Russian president said.
Mr. Putin also described how he stayed up all night with four unnamed Russian leaders on Feb. 22-23 last year and turned to them before going to bed at 7 a.m. to say: "The situation has developed in Ukraine such that we have to start preparing to return Crimea to Russia ." He said the first thing he did was order a secret poll, which he said showed 75% of Crimeans wanted to join Russia . He didn't give details of how the poll was carried out or who participated.
It wasn't until nearly a week later that local Crimean politicians announced plans for a referendum, which wasn't held until March 16 . Russian troops without insignia began arriving to take control of the territory, once Russia but part of Ukraine since 1954.
The documentary aired Sunday amid a clamor about Mr. Putin's health and whereabouts. The Russian president hasn't been seen in public by journalists for more than a week, an unusually rare absence from the public domain for a leader who usually appears nearly every day at public events broadcast on state television.
Mr. Putin is due to appear Monday in St. Petersburg for a summit with the president of Kyrgyzstan . Asked by Russia's independent Dozhd television channel whether Mr. Putin had fallen ill with the flu, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov refused to comment. "The topic is closed, " Mr. Peskov said Sunday.
It has been more than a year since thousands of demonstrators in Ukraine took to Kiev's Independence Square to protest President Viktor Yanukovych's decision to scrap a political and economic pact with Europe and pivot toward Russia . The protests grew into a wider movement against Mr. Yanukovych's government and descended into violence, leading the president to flee the country and ultimately seek the Kremlin's protection.
During the Crimea documentary, Mr. Putin presented the events in Kiev as an armed radical nationalist uprising contrived by the U.S. to topple Mr. Yanukovych in an illegal coup.
"Formally the opposition was supported, above all, by the Europeans," Mr. Putin said. "But we knew, didn't just sense, but knew that the real puppeteers were our American partners and friends. It was them who helped prepare the nationalists. They helped prepare militias in the west of Ukraine , and there was training in Poland and Lithuania ."
Mr. Putin described how he called Russia's special services to the Kremlin and "assigned them the task of saving Mr. Yanukovych's life" in February of last year. "That we saved his life, and his family's lives, I think was a good, noble thing," Mr. Putin said.
The Russian president said he dispatched Russia's military personnel into Crimea's regional parliament in what he described as a defensive measure to safeguard the building. Lawmakers then voted in a new pro-Russian leader in a closed session before a referendum was announced outside the parliament."
Russian troops without insignia fanned out across the Black Sea peninsula, as Moscow set about what Mr. Putin called transforming Crimea into a fortress. The film described how Russia saw a U.S. Navy destroyer moving into the Black Sea and deployed K-300P Bastion coastal defense missile systems in Crimea. "We deployed them so they could be seen clearly from space," Mr. Putin said.
Soon, the residents of the Black Sea peninsula went to vote in a referendum on March 16, 2014 that offered them the choice of staying in Ukraine or leaving Russia . The result overwhelmingly favored joining Russia , though U.S. and European officials called the referendum an illegal vote held at gunpoint.
"The ultimate goal was not to seize Crimea or some kind of annexation," Mr. Putin said in the documentary. "The ultimate goal was to give people the opportunity to express their opinion on how they want to live in the future."
Write to Paul Sonne at [e-mail]
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
03-15-15 1914ET
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