In this photo taken from a video released by Russian TV Pool on Sunday, March 19, 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin talks to local residents during his surprise visit to Mariupol.
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In this photo taken from a video released by Russian TV Pool on Sunday, March 19, 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin talks to local residents during his surprise visit to Mariupol.
AP
Russian President Vladimir Putin made a surprise trip to the occupied city of Mariupol on Saturday and toured parts of the Ukrainian city, which is now rebuilding after a brutal assault by Russian forces last year.
It’s been about 10 months since Russian forces took control of Mariupol in one of the key battles of the Ukraine war, which has now lasted more than a year.
The Russian army besieged Mariupol in February last year, but local fighters were able to hold off larger and better-armed forces for several months before losing control of the city in May, making Mariupol a symbol of Ukraine’s underdog. conflict.
The city saw intense violence during the Russian siege, including Russian shelling of a theater that residents used as a shelter from the fighting. The human rights organization Amnesty International later called the theater bombing a war crime.
Mariupol is also home to the Azovstal steel plant, where Ukrainian soldiers and civilians hid for weeks from the Russian army, refusing to surrender as they resisted the invading army, which became known throughout the world.
Russian state news agency Tass reported Sunday that Putin flew a helicopter to Mariupol before being driven and walking around the city. It was Putin’s first visit to the Donbas region, which the Russian president illegally annexed in September.
“This trip seemed like a staged, orchestrated event for Putin to highlight Russia’s efforts to rebuild Mariupol, which of course was destroyed by Russian forces last year in a battle for control of the city,” NPR Moscow correspondent Charles Maynes said. Weekend Edition Sunday.
“It also seemed a bit of a response to President Biden’s trip to Kiev a month ago, given that this was Putin’s first trip to these newly occupied and theoretically newly annexed territories since the war began,” Maynes added.
During a surprise visit to the Ukrainian capital in February, Biden met with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy and confirmed the US government’s support for Ukraine.
According to Tass, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin told Putin that residents who fled Mariupol last year due to fighting have returned to the city.
A day earlier, Putin traveled to the nearby Crimea region to celebrate the ninth anniversary of Russia’s illegal annexation of the peninsula in 2014.
Putin’s visit to Mariupol followed Friday’s decision by the International Criminal Court to issue an arrest warrant for him and Russian Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova for the alleged illegal deportation of children from the occupied territories of Ukraine to Russia.
Moscow officials rejected the charges, noting that Russia – like the United States – is not a party to the International Criminal Court.