Putin: Russia will ‘never’ return Crimea to Ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that under no circumstances would he give Crimea back to Ukraine, speaking in a new documentary released Sunday ahead of his expected re-election in next week’s poll.

“What, have you gone mad?” he told a journalist who asked him if there were any circumstances under which the Russian leader would be ready to give up Crimea.

“There are no such circumstances and never will be,” he said in the new two-hour documentary “Putin”.

It was published on the social media accounts of notorious pro-Kremlin TV host Dmitry Kiselev ahead of a presidential election on March 18.

Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and supported Russian-speaking insurgents in the east of the ex-Soviet country after a Western-backed popular uprising ousted a Kremlin-backed regime from power in Kiev.