Russian President Vladimir Putin made a surprise visit to the port city of Mariupol, Russian state news agencies reported on Sunday morning, in what would mark his first trip to Ukrainian territory that Moscow illegally annexed in September.
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. On Saturday, Putin traveled to Crimea, a short distance southwest of Mariupol, to mark the ninth anniversary of the Black Sea peninsula's annexation from Ukraine.
The visit came after the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Netherlands, issued an arrest warrant for Putin for the ‘alleged’ war crimes in Ukraine, specifically in connection to his alleged involvement in the abductions of children from the neighbouring country.
The ICC said in a statement that Putin “is allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of (children) and that of unlawful transfer of (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.”
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“There are reasonable grounds to believe that Mr. Putin bears individual criminal responsibility” for the child abductions “for having committed the acts directly, jointly with others and/or through others (and) for his failure to exercise control properly over civilian and military subordinates who committed the acts,” the court said in a statement.
According to a report by Reuters, his trips into Ukrainian territory claimed by Russia was seen by some observers as an act of defiance. The territory fell in May, marking Russia's first major victory. The Organisation for Security and Cooperation and Europe (OSCE) said that Russia's early bombing of a maternity hospital there was a war crime, the Reuters report said.
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(With inputs from AP)
