MOSCOW. Nov 28 (Interfax) - The Russian border guards involved in the incident in the Kerch Strait acted lawfully and performed their military duty, and if they had done otherwise, it would have been necessary to prosecute them, Russian President Vladimir Putin said.
"But how should the border guards have acted? Naval vessels intrude in the Russian Federation's territorial waters and don't respond to inquiries, and nobody knows what they are going to do. How should they have acted? If they had acted otherwise, all of them would have had to be taken to court. They performed their military duty and carried out an order," Putin said at VTB Capital's Russia Calling Investment Forum on Wednesday.
The guards performed their legitimate function of protecting Russia's territorial integrity, he said.