Russian President Vladimir Putin visited command posts of the Kremlin’s forces fighting in Ukraine, officials said Tuesday, as the war approaches its 14th month.
In this photo taken from video released by Russian TV Pool on April 18, 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin arrives at an undisclosed location.
Dressed in a dark suit, Putin appeared to chair meetings with his military top brass during both stops. The locations of the military headquarters weren’t disclosed, making it impossible to assess how close they were to the front line. Nor was it possible to independently verify the authenticity of the video footage.
In a parallel development, the Moscow-appointed governor of the occupied part of Donetsk province, Denis Pushilin, went to Minsk and won pledges of support from Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, a Putin ally. In both locations he visited, Putin congratulated the military divisions on Orthodox Easter, which was celebrated Sunday, and presented them with icons. Speaking to senior officers at the Kherson headquarters, Putin handed them a copy of an Orthodox icon he said belonged to a famous Russian general of the 19th century.
A senior officer who greeted Putin in the Luhansk region, Col. Gen. Alexander Lapin, was also relieved of his duties as the commanding officer of Russian troops in Ukraine’s northeast after he was blamed for a hasty Russian pullback from parts of Kharkiv province in the face of a Ukrainian counteroffensive in September.
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