MOSCOW, March 4 (RIA Novosti) – President Vladimir Putin argued Tuesday that Russia has no legal obligations before Ukraine because it has undergone a revolution.
In his first press conference since the crisis in Ukraine's Crimea region erupted, Putin addressed criticism of his decision to seek powers to order a Russian military intervention.
The request appeared to contradict Russian commitments to Ukraine under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum to respect its sovereignty and not to use force against its former Soviet neighbor.
“When we point out that this was an anti-constitutional coup, they say: ‘This wasn’t … an anti-constitutional coup, it wasn’t an armed seizure of power, it was a revolution,’” Putin said.
“But if this is a revolution, what does that mean? It is hard for me to disagree with some of our experts, who believe that a new state has arisen on this territory. The same thing happened after the collapse of the Russian Empire after the revolution of 1917.”
Russia’s upper house of parliament on Saturday gave approval for the deployment of military forces in Ukraine in what lawmakers argued would serve as a peacekeeping operation to protect Russian citizens and ethnic Russians from alleged intimidation from nationalist Ukrainians.
Ethnic Russians live primarily in southern and eastern regions of Ukraine.
Putin on Tuesday denied any Russian troops had yet deployed around Crimea, despite copious eyewitness testimony attesting to the contrary.
