The surprise visit to Mariupol is intended to send reassuring signals to internal public opinion, but also threatening messages to the West. Vladimir Putin is playing on two fronts. “Russia didn’t have hypersonic weapons in 2014, but it does now, and the fact that it doesn’t use them doesn’t mean they don’t exist,” the Russian president said in an interview with TASS TV channel Rossiya-1. When asked about the need to use ground forces, Putin said about hypersonic weapons: “Of course we don’t use them, but they exist.”
Also read: “Blackmailing Putin for the negotiations”. The Arrest Warrant and the British Plan
Putin today conducted what the Kremlin defined as his “working visit” to Mariupol, the landmark of the Ukrainian resistance city that fell into Russian hands after a bloody siege. He visited the restored Philharmonic Hall, where the “show trials” were held against Ukrainian soldiers captured during the siege of Azovstal and then exchanged for Russian soldiers. He went to the brand new homes being built by the Russians after they destroyed and took control of the port city overlooking the Sea of Azov. And he met the citizens who took to the streets at night to assure them that “everything will be fine” and that “we have to start getting to know each other better” because what happened was because of the “Nazis, they are Nazis .Guys, because well, he doesn’t do those things.”
Your browser does not support the iframe tag
Media blitz that enraged Kiev: “The criminal always returns to the crime scene. As the civilized world announces the arrest of the ‘war director’ (ie Putin) if he oversteps its bounds, the murderer came to thousands of Mariupol families to admire the city’s ruins and tombs. Cynicism and lack of remorse,” commented Mikhaylo Podolyak, adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on Twitter.