BRISBANE, November 16 /TASS/. Even during Russia’s conflict in Chechnya, the federal authorities kept helping its people. In the end, that played a very positive role in settling the conflict in the Chechen Republic, Russian President Vladimir Putin told a news conference in Brisbane on Sunday.

Commenting on Ukraine’s law on economic blockade of Ukraine’s Donbas region that has been signed by President Petro Poroshenko, Putin said that even in the hardest days, months and years of the Chechen war Russia had never stopped financing the Chechen Republic. “We regularly paid pensions and allowances and subsidized the budget,” Putin said.

That line of behavior could seem strange at first glance because at that time the money could not only be stolen but also re-directed at “clearly unhandsome goals”.

“We did that because of our moral obligations to the (Chechen) people. In the end, it turned out to be the right decision because people, including those in the Chechen Republic, appreciated what Russia had done,” the Russian president explained.