Putin says plan to take Crimea hatched before referendum

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi at the Kremlin in Moscow, March 5, 2015. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he ordered officials to start work on taking control of Crimea weeks before a referendum which, the Kremlin has asserted until now, prompted the region's annexation from Ukraine.

Russian state television channel Rossiya-1 aired a brief extract of an interview in which Putin said he had called an emergency meeting in February last year to discuss the overthrow of Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich hours earlier.