March 19, 2023 Russia's war in Ukraine

Oleksii Honcharenko, Ukrainian MP and member of the Ukrainian delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), blasted “war criminal” Putin on Sunday, questioning the timing of his visit to Mariupol.

“Did the war criminal come to see with his own eyes the genocide he committed in Mariupol?” Why at night? Is he afraid?” Honcharenko asked in a telegram.

During the visit, Putin was seen speaking to residents and discussing reconstruction plans for Mariupol, including the airport. 

Mariupol was badly damaged during the Russian assault, which destroyed the Azovstal steel works, the last holdout of Ukrainian forces in the city.

Putin’s visit to Mariupol comes almost ten months to the day since Russian troops claimed to have “liberated” the Azovstal Steel Plant in Mariupol, the last stand for Ukrainian forces after a bloody siege that devastated large parts of the city. 

And yet the question is why Putin waited so long to carry out what is in some ways an obvious PR exercise. 

Mariupol remains Russia’s biggest prize in this war – still the only major city it has captured, and managed to hold onto (it was forced to retreat from Kherson in November). 

Security concerns may be part of it. Earlier this month Putin cancelled a visit to a tank factory in southern Russia after Russian security officials claimed a small Ukrainian armed group crossed the border and killed two civilians. 

It’s also possible the scale of the destruction of the city meant it took this long for enough rebuilding to happen to provide an acceptable backdrop for the photo ops. All of the footage released of Putin’s visit is after dark.

But if this unannounced visit was in the works before the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant against Putin himself, that may have cemented his resolve. 

The visit provides a low-risk opportunity to signal to the world that he is not holed up in the Kremlin, and a sign to the Russian people he is in charge, youthful and vigorous enough to drive himself around the city, and heavily focused on rebuilding and integrating those illegally occupied territories of Ukraine into Russia.

Mariupol, a port city on the Sea of Azov, is located in Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast and has been under direct Russian control since May 2022.

Russian attacks on Mariupol began on February 24, 2022 – the first day of the invasion. The city was subjected to some of the war’s worst atrocities.

In March, an airstrike ripped through a maternity and children’s hospital in the city. Russian officials claimed the hospital was a justifiable military target, based on their unproven assertion that Ukrainian military targets were on site and that all patients and medical staff had left.

But footage circulating on social media showed expectant mothers being escorted out of a ruined building amid charred cars and debris.

Among the injured was a pregnant woman who was photographed being carried out on a stretcher. Neither she nor her baby could be saved, a surgeon who treated her later confirmed. The photo caused shockwaves around the world.

Also in March, Russia bombed a theater where hundreds of people had taken shelter in Mariupol. The word “children” was spelled out on two sides of the theater before it was bombed.

Of the 450,000 people who lived in the city before the war, a third had already left by mid-April, according to Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko.

Some of those who stayed took refuge in the Azovstal steel plants. To Ukrainians, Azovstal became a potent symbol of resistance, sheltering about 2,600 soldiers and civilians while the fortress-like facility was pummeled by Russian bombardment for weeks.

To Moscow, the vast site was a frustration, the last stubborn holdout in a city that its forces had otherwise taken control over weeks earlier.

"Block off the industrial site, so that not even a fly can escape," Putin said, his command broadcast on state-run television.

Yuriy Ryzhenkov, CEO of Metinvest Holding, which owns the plant, told CNN why Putin wanted to take Azovstal so badly.

“I don’t think it’s the plant that he wants. I think it’s about the symbolism that they wanted to conquer Mariupol. They never expected Mariupol to resist,” Ryzhenkov said.

Azovstal finally fell late in May, after an evacuation operation managed to rescue hundreds of Ukrainians from the plant.

Welcome to our coverage of the Ukraine conflict. Our main news is Vladimir Putin's surprise visit to Mariupol, a city which has been under Russian control since May 2022.

Few details of the trip have been released but the Russian president was flown into Mariupol by helicopter and toured districts around the city in a car, according to a Kremlin statement issued on Sunday.

News of the visit comes just two days after the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Putin and Russian official Maria Lvova-Belova for an alleged scheme to deport Ukrainian children to Russia.

We are seeking more about the visit, as well as reaction from Ukraine and beyond.