MOSCOW. April 21 (interfax) - Vladimir Putin was not being untruthful when he first said that were no Russian troops in Crimea, his press secretary Dmitry Peskov said.
"The truth is in juxtaposing the temporal parameters of what happened: when the president was giving explanations for the first time, he was giving his assessment of what was going on in Ukraine, and of the situation in Crimea, in particular. It was a few days, if a not a week, before the referendum, even more than a week. At the time the president acknowledged the fact that there was no one there (no Russian troops). But at the time of the referendum, as Putin said yesterday, security at the referendum was in fact provided by special people. Polite people," Peskov said on the Sunday Night With Sergei Solovyov television program.
When the president was making the decision (to incorporate Crimea), "he could not decide anything without having the results of the referendum," he said.
"The decision was made by him personally. It is those figures which confirmed the reality that existed in Crimea that gave Putin an opportunity to make this responsible choice backed by our country's entire population," Peskov said.