Russian President Vladimir Putin has visited the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, devastated by bombing, on his first trip to the conflict zone since the start of the Russian offensive in Ukraine, the Kremlin reported on Sunday. Putin arrived in Mariupol after traveling to the Crimean peninsula on Saturday to mark the ninth anniversary of its annexation by Russia in 2014.
Putin arrived in Mariupol by helicopter and took a tour of the city driving himself, the official TASS news agency reported, citing the Kremlin. He talked with local people, visited places of interest and received a report on the reconstruction work in Mariupol, the same source said. It is his first visit to this southeastern Ukrainian port city, devastated after months of siege by Russian forces, who captured it in May 2022.
Putin’s arrival in Mariupol came after his surprise visit to Crimea. In Sevastopol, the home port of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, Putin attended the inauguration of a children’s art school together with the local governor, Mikhail Razvojayev, according to images from the Rossia-1 public television network. This is Putin’s closest trip to the front line.
«Our President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin knows how to surprise. In the good sense of the word,” Moscow-appointed governor Mikhail Razvojaev wrote on Telegram. «But Vladimir Vladimirovich came in person. Because on a historic day like today, he is always with Sebastopol and its inhabitants,” he said.
Offensive in Ukraine
The visit did not mark a pause in military operations in eastern Ukraine, where at least two people have been killed in Russian shelling, according to Ukrainian sources. At least two people died and ten were injured, three seriously, in bombardments with “cluster bombs” in Kramatorsk, a city in the Donbas mining basin (east), according to Pavlo Kirilenko, Donetsk regional governor.
Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky reaffirmed Ukraine’s sovereignty over Crimea in January and its refusal to include it as a concession in any peace negotiations. Putin made this trip the day after the International Criminal Court (ICC), based in The Hague, issued an arrest warrant against him for “illegal deportation” of Ukrainian children in areas occupied by Russia since February 2022. Kiev ensures that more than 16,000 Ukrainian children have been deported to Russia since the start of the conflict. Russia, which is not part of the member countries of the ICC, considered that order “null and void.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping will arrive in Russia on Monday, seeking to increasingly position his country as a mediator in international conflicts. “We have declared on several occasions that we are open to serious proposals from the West and Ukraine on a solution to the crisis through political-diplomatic means,” Russian diplomacy spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Saturday. “But ultimatums are unacceptable,” she added, demanding the “lifting of all illegitimate sanctions and the annulment of all legal actions against Russia before international judicial bodies.”