Russian President Vladimir Putin paid a surprise visit on Saturday evening to occupied Mariupol, the eastern Ukrainian city that Russia seized in May after mostly destroying it during a brutal months-long siege.
The visit was a symbolic display of bravado by Putin, just a day after the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for his arrest over alleged war crimes and right before a state visit to Russia by Chinese President Xi Jinping, which begins Monday. It was Putin’s first known trip to occupied Ukrainian territory since the start of his invasion in February last year, in which the West estimates some 200,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded.
Other videos carried on Russian state media early Sunday showed Putin sitting in an empty hall of a rebuilt philharmonic, as well as talking to a small group of residents in nighttime darkness outside a newly constructed residential complex in the Nevsky district, a project widely used by Russian propagandists to praise Moscow’s swift rebuilding of the city.
Other Ukrainian officials also suggested, without providing evidence, that Putin had not really visited but sent a body double.The Russian president’s trip was part of a two-day tour across occupied territories. At least 1,000 such children were relocated to Russia from Mariupol, according to Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s children’s rights ombudswoman. The ICC also issued an arrest warrant for Lvova-Belova on Friday, accusing her of the same crimes as Putin.To solidify Russia’s control over the occupied territories, Moscow has pushed to bring the population into its legal orbit by issuing Russian passports and making it easy to sign up for modest government benefits.
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