Vladimir Putin, who flew to Mariupol by helicopter, drove around the city and stopped to talk to residents, TASS agency says.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has visited Mariupol, a Ukrainian city in the Donetsk region which has been occupied by Moscow’s forces since May of last year.
Putin flew to Mariupol by helicopter and drove around several districts of the city, the TASS agency reported on Sunday, citing the Kremlin.
Russian state television broadcast extended footage of Putin being shown around the city on Saturday night, meeting rehoused residents and being briefed on reconstruction efforts by Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin.
Reports of the Mariupol visit came a day after Putin travelled to Crimea to mark the ninth anniversary of Russia’s annexation of the Black Sea peninsula from Ukraine. Russian state TV also showed him visiting the Black Sea port city of Sevastopol on Saturday, accompanied by the local Moscow-appointed governor, Mikhail Razvozhayev.
Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 following a referendum that was not recognised by Kyiv and the international community.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has demanded that Russia withdraw from Crimea as well as the areas it has occupied since it launched an invasion last year.
‘Do you like it here?’
State media said, during his trip to Mariupol, Putin visited a new residential neighbourhood that had been built by the Russian military with the first people moving in last September.
“Do you live here? Do you like it?” Putin was shown asking residents.
“Very much. It’s a little piece of heaven that we have here now,” a woman replied, clasping her hands and thanking Putin for “the victory”.
Residents have been “actively” returning, Khusnullin told Putin.
Mariupol had a population of half a million people before the war and was home to the Azovstal steel plant, one of Europe’s largest, where Ukrainian fighters held out for weeks in underground tunnels and bunkers before being forced to surrender.
From Mariupol, Putin went to Rostov in southern Russia, where state TV on Sunday showed him meeting Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, commander of Russia’s war effort in Ukraine.
Putin’s visit to Mariupol also comes after the International Criminal Court (ICC) said on Friday it had issued an arrest warrant against him and accused him of the war crime of illegally deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine.
Putin has yet to comment publicly…