Mr Putin vanished soon after aides to one of his key allies were blamed for ordering the assassination of one of the Kremlin's most outspoken critics, Boris Nemtsov . Vladimir Putin has admitted that he was ready to place his nuclear attack forces on alert when he seized Crimea a year ago. The Russian president's revelation was aired in a pre-recorded TV interview broadcast at the end of last week. In the documentary – titled Crimea: Way Back Home – he claimed the area was Russia's 'historic territory', even though under international law it remains Ukrainian. Putin went on to say: 'Russian people live there, they are in danger and we cannot leave them.' He also claimed that he feared they would have been overrun by 'a nationalist bulldozer' from Kiev, and said he could not have left the area and the people who live there 'to whims of fate'. However the president explained that he knew the West could have intervened, and had been 'ready' to put his nuclear arsenal on alert, adding: 'I talked with colleagues and told them that Crimea is our historic territory. We were ready to do it.' The Kremlin has since claimed it has the right to station nuclear weapons on the Crimean peninsula. Yesterday's interview came a full ten days after Putin was last seen in public, amid rumours of illness, a coup, or his Olympic gymnast 'lover' Alina Kabayeva giving birth to a child in Switzerland. He vanished soon after aides to one of his key allies were blamed for ordering the assassination of one of the Kremlin's most outspoken critics, Boris Nemtsov. Scroll down for video . The crisis over his disappearance will deepen if he fails to appear this week at a number of events to commemorate the restoration of Crimea to Russia . Opposition TV channel Dozhd has claimed that the president has hidden himself away in one of his many luxurious official residences, a forest hideaway near Lake Valdai in the Novgorod region. But asked yesterday about whether his disappearance from public life was down to a bout of flu, Putin's press secretary Dmitry Peskov would only say: 'No comment. The topic is closed.' The crisis over his disappearance will deepen if he fails to appear this week at a number of events to commemorate the restoration of Crimea to Russia. Today the president is scheduled to meet Almazbek Atambayev, the president of Kyrgyzstan – after last week postponing a summit with the leaders of Kazakhstan and Belarus.
Mr Putin says he was ready to put Russia's nuclear weapons on standby . Comments relate to the tensions over the crisis in Ukraine and Crimea . Mr Putin says Russians in Crimea in danger before Russia annexed it .