Ukraine denounced on Sunday the “cynicism” of the Russian president Vladimir Putin after his surprise visit to the city of Mariupol, captured last year by Moscow forces, and denounced that he made it at night as a “thief”.
“The criminal always returns to the scene of the crime (…) the murderer of thousands of families in Mariupol came to admire the ruins of the city and (their) graves. Cynicism and lack of remorse,” wrote the presidential adviser Ukrainian Mikhailo Podoliak on Twitter. This was Putin’s first trip to the occupied zone since the start of the Russian offensive in Ukraine in February 2022.
Mariupol, in southeastern Ukraine, fell to Moscow in May 2022 after months of siege and shelling devastated the city.
“International criminal Putin visited occupied Mariupol at night “probably so as not to see the city murdered for his ‘liberation’ in daylight,” the port city’s municipal council wrote on Telegram.
Putin made the trip just two days after The Hague-based International Criminal Court called for his arrest over the deportation of children from Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine.
The Ukrainian Defense Ministry said on Twitter that the Russian president he visited Mariupol “like a thief (…) under cover of night”.
“Firstly, it is safer. Also, the darkness allows you to highlight what you want to show, and keeps the city that your army completely destroyed and its few surviving inhabitants away from prying eyes,” the ministry said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov told reporters that Putin decided to make the trip at the last moment. It was a “very spontaneous” visit, stressed.
“Their movements in the city were not planned either,” he added, referring to a visit to a local theater and a meeting with some local residents.
The Russian president’s visit to Mariupol follows Saturday’s visit to the Crimean peninsula, within the framework of the ninth anniversary of its annexation by Moscow in 2014.
Source: Ambito
