Russian president and newly indicted war criminal Vladimir Putin made a surprise visit to the devastated city of Mariupol in Ukraine on Saturday night, where he was filmed driving around and chatting with some of the few residents who survived.
Russian president Vladimir Putin became the latest world leader to visit Ukraine on Saturday, his first trip outside of Russia since the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for his arrest on war crime charges. It was also his first known trip to territory Russia has seized during its full-scale war in Ukraine.
After celebrating the ninth anniversary of Russia’s illegal annexation of the Crimean peninsula in Sevastopol earlier Saturday, Putin visited the ruins of Mariupol, the once bustling seaside Ukrainian city Russian forces laid siege to for months last Spring while attempting to defeat a small group of overmatched Ukrainian fighters.
As many as 90 percent of Mariupol’s residential buildings were damaged or destroyed in the siege, the United Nations estimated last year, and the population of the port city is now as little as a quarter of what it was before the war.
