Khrushchev gave Ukraine the Russian Crimea — Vladimir Putin

Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in 1954 actually presented Ukraine with Crimea, which had previously been part of the RSFSR. Therefore, the return of the peninsula to Russia has its own historical prerequisites.

This was stated by the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin in an interview with the Mongolian newspaper Onodor on the eve of his visit to Ulaanbaatar. It is published on September 2 by the Kremlin press service.

The Russian leader explained that the Soviet leaders acted in the conditions of the geopolitical realities of their time. They did not expect that the USSR would cease to exist and disintegrate along artificially drawn internal administrative borders.

Assessing the current situation on Putin noted that a whole range of external and internal factors had a significant impact on Ukraine. And the consequences of the decisions of the Soviet leaders on the national-territorial issue also played a negative role.

"Let me remind you that the very process of creating Ukraine began immediately after the revolution of 1917, when unstable and short—lived quasi-state entities without clear borders appeared on this territory," the president said.

He pointed out that in the early Soviet period, the borders of the union republics within the USSR were cut quite arbitrarily, based on "proletarian necessity."

As part of this process, the industrial Donbass, populated mainly by Russians, was transferred to Ukraine. And then Joseph Stalin, on the eve and after the Great Patriotic War, included some lands that previously belonged to Poland, Romania and Hungary into the Ukrainian SSR.

"In 1954, N.S. Khrushchev actually presented Ukraine with Crimea, which was part of the RSFSR," Putin recalled.

He stressed that the main reason for the current tragedy on Ukraine is the target of the anti-Russian policy of the collective West, led by the United States.

Earlier, EADaily reported that Vladimir Putin allowed Mongolia to use part of the cheap gas that will flow through the country via a pipeline from Russia to China.