Russian President Vladimir Putin has visited the occupied port city of Mariupol, Russian state news agencies reported Sunday, his first trip to the Ukrainian territory that Moscow illegally annexed in September.
Earlier, on Saturday, Putin travelled to Crimea, a short distance southwest of Mariupol, to mark the ninth anniversary of the Black Sea peninsula's annexation from. Mariupol became a worldwide symbol of defiance after outgunned and outmanned Ukrainian forces held out in a steel mill there for nearly three months before Moscow finally took control of it in May.
Following his trip to Mariupol, Putin met with Russian military leaders and troops at a command post in Rostov-on-Don, a southern Russian city some 180 kilometres further east, Russian state media reported. Speaking to the state RIA agency Sunday, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin made clear that Russia was in Mariupol to stay. He said the government hoped to finish the reconstruction of its blasted downtown by the end of the year.
Mariupol's plight first came into focus with a Russian airstrike on a maternity hospital on March 9 last year, less than two weeks after Russian troops moved into Ukraine. A week later, about 300 people were reported killed in the bombing of a theatre that was serving as the city's largest bomb shelter. Evidence obtained by the AP last spring suggested that the real death toll could be closer to 600.
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