Russian President, Vladmir Putin, has admitted that he ordered the takeover of Crimea, weeks before the peninsula had a self-determination referendum.
Mr Putin had ordered that the returning of Crimea to Russia should begin, during an all-night meeting on February 22, 2014, after former Ukrainian President, Victor Yanukovych, was ousted.
This new revelation runs against Mr Putin’s claim in April last year that he only took his final decision about Crimea after opinion polls, revealed that 80 per cent of Crimeans wanted to join Russia.
The practically non-violent seizure of Crimea, a Black Sea peninsula which has an ethnic Russian majority and where Moscow has a naval base, was followed by a pro-Moscow insurgency in the east of Ukraine.
About 5,000 people had died in the fighting that broke out in eastern Ukraine, after the unrecognized referendum.
A delicate armistice, agreed last month in Minsk, has largely held so far.
Western governments had condemned Russia’s intervention in Crimea as illegal, with the European Union and United States imposing sanctions on Moscow.
In the past months, Putin has adjusted his account of what happened. He initially denied the allegations that Russian troops were providing security for the referendum, but later acknowledged Special Forces had been deployed.
