Kremlin propaganda shows Putin in Mariupol – doubts about the portrayal

For the first time since the start of Russia’s offensive war against Ukraine, Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin has apparently visited the neighboring country’s occupied territories. As the Kremlin announced on Sunday night, Putin had made a “working visit” to the Sea of ​​Azov port city of Mariupol, which had been devastated in fierce fighting.

Russian state television showed the 70-year-old behind the wheel of a car driving through the city at night. There was also damage to buildings.

Tour of Mariupol

After arriving in a helicopter, he informed himself about the situation during a tour and also spoke to residents of the city, the Kremlin said. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Chusnullin briefed Putin on the status of reconstruction. “People are starting to come back to the city,” Chusnullin said from the passenger seat. Street lighting and bus traffic are back in Mariupol, it was said.

According to the report, state television also showed Putin’s visit to the city’s philharmonic hall, where the president was seated in a hall. According to Chusnullin, a university building and student residence are also intact. Citizens were also shown thanking Putin for the unannounced visit. These representations cannot be independently verified.

“Residents were probably plainclothes security guards”

There are also doubts about these representations. Time and again, Kremlin propaganda publishes citizen talk whose participants later turn out to be actors or particularly loyal to the government (as on this occasion).

“Amazingly, Putin appears to have actually visited Mariupol,” wrote Stephen Hall, a scholar of Eastern Europe at Britain’s University of Bath, adding: “I still reserve the right to judge. Putin has many lookalikes and the ‘grateful’ residents were probably plainclothes guards.”

The Wall Street Journal’s Ukraine correspondent, Matthew Luxmoore, shared the TV clip of Putin meeting the alleged residents. “In Moscow, entire streets are evacuated when he passes by, but Russian state television wants Russians to believe that this wave of gratitude is spontaneous,” he writes.

The adviser to the Ukrainian Ministry of the Interior, Anton Gerashchenko, has another guess: “This visit seems hasty and unplanned,” he writes on Twitter. “It seems like a pathetic response to the International Criminal Court’s decision.” The court issued an arrest warrant for Putin last week.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s adviser Mykhailo Podoliak condemned Putin’s visit, saying: “The criminal always returns to the crime scene.” He continued on Twitter: “As the civilized world announces the arrest of the ‘war director’ (…) in case he exceeds his limits, the murderer of thousands of families came from Mariupol to admire the ruins of the city and the graves .” Podoljak’s conclusion: “Cynicism and lack of remorse.”

According to the Kremlin, Putin also held a meeting at a command center for the “military special operation” against Ukraine, as the war is officially called in Russia, in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don near Ukraine. There the President was briefed by Commander Valeri Gerasimov, also Chief of the Russian General Staff, and other officers on the progress of combat operations in the neighboring country.

On Saturday afternoon, Putin visited Ukraine’s Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which was annexed in 2014. On the ninth anniversary of its founding, state television broadcast images of the Kremlin chief driving a car and opening a children’s art school in the port city of Sevastopol. Again, photos from the visit fueled speculation, as you can see here.

Russia launched an offensive war against Ukraine on February 24 last year. Mariupol was besieged by Russian forces and did not come under full Russian military control until May 20. During the fighting, the city was largely destroyed. Ukraine announced plans to liberate Mariupol.

(t-online/dpa)