Had Moscow not reabsorbed Crimea in 2014, radical groups from Ukraine as well as Western private military soldiers would have made it their stronghold, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu has claimed.
Speaking as part of an interview with Moscow newspaper Argumenty i Fakty published on Monday, the senior official said that “if all these people – Ukrainian neo-fascists, ultranationalists, extremists and mercenaries from European countries and the United States – had come to Crimea after the coup d’état in Kiev, as they were about to do, I assure you, no one would have thought any less.”