A day after the International Criminal Court indicted him for war crimes, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s defiant midnight propaganda tour of Mariupol drew scathing criticism from Ukrainian leaders, who noted that “the criminal at all times returns to the scene of the crime.”
Russian state media selected a positive response to the 70-year-old dictator’s visit to the decimated port city, showing Putin twiddling with displaced residents on his first trip to the front lines of his country’s 13-month unprovoked invasion.
Critics accused Putin of visiting Mariupol under the cover of night to avoid being confronted with the full extent of annihilation in the fully occupied eastern city, where around 90% of its buildings were destroyed in the early months of the war.
Ukraine estimates that 20,000 inhabitants were killed and 70% of the city’s population was forced to flee in consequence of Russia’s brutal land grabs.
‘The criminal at all times returns to the crime scene’, adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky Mykhailo Podoliak he wrote on Twitter.
![The cunning duo in the car](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/NYPICHPDPICT000008495193.jpg?w=1024)
![Russian President Vladimir Putin (right) listens to Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/AFP_33BM8BZ.jpg?w=1024)
His opinion was shared by the exiled mayor of Mariupol, Vadym Boichenko.
“He got here in person to see what he had done,” said Boychenko he told the BBC. “He got here to see what he could be punished for.”
On the ground, Kremlin propaganda painted a much rosier picture as Putin was seen driving around the city while Russian officials briefed him on the reconstruction efforts.
“Do you reside here? Do you prefer it?” Putin was filmed asking people.
“Very. Now we have slightly piece of heaven here now,” the woman replied, clasping her hands and thanking Putin for the “victory.”
“We want to start out attending to know one another higher,” Putin told a gaggle of bewildered residents. based on CNN.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin accompanied Putin on his spontaneous tour of Europe’s bombed-out former industrial center.
“Downtown has been badly damaged,” Khusnullin said. “We would like to complete (reconstructing) the center by the end of the 12 months, no less than the façade part. The middle could be very nice.”
![Vladimir Putin](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/AFP_33BM8CH.jpg?w=1024)
![Putin talks with the inhabitants of Mariupol](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/NYPICHPDPICT000008495652.jpg?w=1024)
The duo also talked about plans to construct a recent hospital to switch a kid’s and maternity hospital that was bombed while patients and staff were inside.
“There can be an ambulance and all the state-of-the-art labs can be there,” Khusnullin said, based on the report.
“Every part can be high-quality,” Putin replies.
Putin’s defiant visit got here as his staff said an arrest warrant issued by the ICC for the alleged abduction and deportation of children and other Ukrainians to Russia was “invalid” and “outrageous and unacceptable”.
![A high-rise apartment block that was destroyed during the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War in Mariupol, Russian-controlled Ukraine, March 16, 2023.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/Mariupol-7.jpg?w=1024)
The May bombing of a theater in Mariupol, which housed a family’s shelter, which killed lots of, also amounted to a war crime, human rights groups said.
Putin could be subject to arrest if he set foot in any of the 123 countries which have signed The Hauge court charter.
In response to state media, the strongman traveled by helicopter to Mariupol in the illegally annexed Donetsk region after visiting Crimea on the ninth anniversary of its occupation by Russia.
With postal wires