The visit to Mariupol is the Russian leader’s first trip to an occupied area since the start of the offensive on February 24, 2022.
“The criminal always returns to the scene of the crime. (…) The murderer of thousands of families in Mariupol came to admire the ruins of the city and their tombs. Cynicism and lack of remorse”, denounced adviser to the Ukrainian presidency, Mykhailo Podolyak, at the Twitter.
The port city, located in the eastern region of Donbass, was devastated after months of siege by Russian forces, who took it in May 2022.
According to images released by Russian state television, the trip took place at night, which was criticized by the Ukrainian authorities.
“The international criminal Putin visited occupied Mariupol at night, presumably so as not to see the city killed by his ‘liberation’ in the light of day,” the city council wrote in Telegram.
The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense declared, for its part, that the Russian leader visited Mariupol “like a thief (…) under cover of night”.
Putin arrived in Mariupol after visiting Crimea on Saturday, the anniversary of Moscow’s annexation of that peninsula in 2014.
The visits come after the International Criminal Court (ICC), based in The Hague, on Friday issued an arrest warrant against him for the deportation of children in areas of Ukraine occupied by Russia.
On the ground, the war continues and, in the Ukrainian region of Zaporizhzhia (south), Russian bombings killed three people this Sunday and injured two others, according to local authorities.
– Visit “very spontaneous” –
In images released by Russian television, it is possible to see Putin talking to residents on the streets.
“We pray for you”, says a resident, who claims that the city, on the shores of the Sea of Azov, “is a little paradise”.
The president arrived by helicopter and toured Mariupol in his own vehicle, the Kremlin said.
Putin also visited the newly reconstructed local Philharmonic and received information about the city’s reconstruction work, detailed the Russian press service.
It was a “very spontaneous” visit, insisted his spokesman, Dmitri Peskov. “His displacements in the city were also not foreseen”, he added.
For the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, the fact that Putin made the trip at night allowed him to “highlight what he wants to show”.
In this way, he kept “the city his army completely destroyed and its few surviving inhabitants away from prying eyes,” he said.
Putin is due back in Moscow on Monday for the arrival of Chinese President Xi Jinping, with whom he will sign a series of agreements.
Xi’s visit, scheduled until Wednesday, will mark the beginning of a “new era” in relations between the two allied countries, according to the Kremlin.
Westerners are hoping that Xi will use his visit to Moscow to urge his “old friend” Putin to end the conflict.
China did not condemn the military offensive and tried to present itself as a neutral actor in the discord, a position criticized by Western leaders.
After the ICC on Friday requested the arrest of Vladimir Putin for the deportation of children, Russia, which is not part of the international court, called the order “null and void”.
Kiev claims that more than 16,000 Ukrainian children from occupied areas have been taken to Russia since the start of the conflict.
In Sevastopol, base port of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Crimea, Putin participated in the inauguration of an arts school for children together with the local governor, Mikhail Razvojayev, according to images from the public channel Rossia-1.
“Our President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin knows how to surprise. In the good sense of the word,” Razvojayev said via Telegram.