Russian President Vladimir Putin defended a World War II non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union at a conference with history students.

Putin said he approved of the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact, also known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which assured neither country would attack the other, but included secret side arrangements -- denied until 1989 by the Soviet Union -- regarding the carving of Eastern Europe into Nazi and Soviet spheres of influence.