Putin warns hostile states plotting 'sabotage' in Crimea

Russia's President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting with members of the Russian government at the Novo-Ogaryovo residence, outside Moscow, on August 5, 2015

MOSCOW  - Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested Wednesday that several foreign states were recruiting and training people to carry out acts of sabotage on the Crimean peninsula seized by Moscow last year.

"It's obvious that a risk remains from outside forces to destabilise the situation on the peninsula in one way or another," Putin told a meeting on regional security in Crimea's naval port city of Sevastopol, quoted by RIA Novosti state news agency.

Putin is on his third visit to Crimea since he ordered out thousands of special forces troops to take control of the peninsula from Ukraine in March last year.

"In certain capitals, they talk openly about this, they talk about the need to carry out subversive activities," Putin warned his security council of ministers and top officials .

"Such structures are being formed, personnel are being recruited and trained to carry out subversion, acts of sabotage to conduct radical propaganda," he said, without specifying any countries.

Putin warned that foreign powers could "play the nationalist card" or manipulate public anger at "ineffective action by the authorities" into "a destructive channel".

Putin spoke as prosecutors asked for a 23-year sentence for Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov who is on trial at a military court in Russia over allegations he plotted and carried out "terrorist attacks" in his native Crimea after Russia seized it from Ukraine.