As Western governments seethed last spring over Russia's takeover of the Crimea region in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin told advisers that the world eventually would accept the audacious move. The Kremlin was confident the economic costs of Western sanctions, though substantial, would be tolerable for the world’s ninth-largest economy.
Russia's War Against Ukraine
Wall Street Journal: Putin’s year of defiance and miscalculation
Russian President Vladimir Putin's speech is broadcast during his annual address to the Federal council (the two houses of the Russian parliament)at the Kremlin in Moscow on December 4, 2014.
