Russian President Vladimir Putin has defended his country's annexation of Ukraine's Crimean peninsula and accused the West of using the Ukraine crisis as a pretext to impose sanctions on Moscow.
Delivering his annual state of the union speech Thursday, Mr. Putin referred to Crimea as Russia's spiritual ground. On the subject of Western sanctions, he said "when anyone thinks Russia has become strong, independent, such instruments are applied immediately."
Russia's economic situation has unraveled since the United States and the European Union imposed a series of increasingly harsh economic sanctions on Moscow over its annexation of Crimea and what they see as support for separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine.
Those sanctions, coupled with a sharp decline in oil exports and the freefall of the Russian ruble, prompted Moscow on Tuesday to predict the Russian economy will further contract in 2015.
In his speech, Mr. Putin said the country's National Weath Fund should be used for supporting domestic banks. He said as of November 1, the fund, which aims to cover future pension shortages, stood at $81.7 billion.