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President Vladimir Putin made a surprise trip to occupied Mariupol, the Ukrainian city largely destroyed by a months-long Russian siege, according to a Kremlin statement and video released on state television.
The highly classified visit was Putin’s first to one of the four Ukrainian regions that Russia claimed in September to have annexed as part of its invasion launched in February 2022.
The trip, which the Kremlin said hadn’t been planned in advance, came after the Russian leader was issued an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court for alleged “war crimes.â€
Putin’s stops in Mariupol and later in Russia’s Rostov-on-Don followed his unannounced appearance in Crimea, the peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014.
The visit to Mariupol, on the Sea of Azov in southern Donetsk province, came almost a year to the day after a Kremlin strike on a drama theatre there allegedly killed hundreds of civilians taking shelter.