Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday warned that he'd been authorized to send troops to eastern Ukraine, though he said that he hoped it would not come to that.
In a televised interview, Putin noted that the Russian Parliament last month unanimously approved using force in eastern Ukraine to protect ethnic Russians. And he ominously referred to the region as "new Russia," suggesting Moscow had a legitimate claim to the land and saying only "God knows" why it ever became part of Ukraine in the first place.
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