KYIV, Ukraine — Russian President Vladimir Putin has visited the occupied port metropolis of Mariupol, Russian state information companies reported Sunday, his first journey to the Ukrainian territory that Moscow illegally annexed in September.

Earlier, on Saturday, Putin traveled to Crimea, a brief distance southwest of Mariupol, to mark the ninth anniversary of the Black Sea peninsula’s annexation from Ukraine. Mariupol grew to become a worldwide image of defiance after outgunned and outmanned Ukrainian forces held out in a metal mill there for practically three months earlier than Moscow lastly took management of it in Could.

The visits, throughout which he was proven chatting with native residents in Mariupol and visiting an artwork college and a kids’s middle in Crimea, had been a present of defiance by the Russian chief two days after a court docket issued a warrant for his arrest on warfare crimes costs. Putin has not commented on the arrest warrant, which deepened his worldwide isolation regardless of the unlikelihood of him going through trial anytime quickly.

The journey additionally got here forward of a deliberate go to to Moscow by Chinese language President Xi Jinping this week, anticipated to offer a serious diplomatic enhance to Putin in his confrontation with the West.

Putin arrived in Mariupol by helicopter after which drove himself across the metropolis’s “memorial websites,” live performance corridor and shoreline, Russian information experiences mentioned, with out specifying precisely when the go to happened. They mentioned Putin additionally met with native residents within the metropolis’s Nevskyi district.

Talking to the state RIA company Sunday, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnulin made clear that Russia was in Mariupol to remain. He mentioned the federal government hoped to complete the reconstruction of its blasted downtown by the tip of the yr.

“Individuals have began to return. Once they noticed that reconstruction is below approach, individuals began actively returning,” Khusnulin advised RIA.

When Moscow totally captured town in Could, an estimated 100,000 individuals remained out of a prewar inhabitants of 450,000. Many had been trapped with out meals, water, warmth or electrical energy. Relentless bombardment left rows upon rows of shattered or hollowed-out buildings.

Mariupol’s plight first got here into focus with a Russian airstrike on a maternity hospital on March 9 final yr, lower than two weeks after Russian troops moved into Ukraine. Per week later, about 300 individuals had been reported killed within the bombing of a theater that was serving as town’s largest bomb shelter. Proof obtained by the AP final spring recommended that the actual loss of life toll may very well be nearer to 600.

A small group of Ukrainian fighters held out for 83 days within the sprawling Azovstal metal works in japanese Mariupol earlier than surrendering, their dogged protection tying down Russian forces and coming to represent Ukrainian tenacity within the face of Moscow’s aggression.

Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, a transfer that a lot of the world denounced as unlawful, and moved on final September to formally declare 4 areas in Ukraine’s south and east as Russian territory, following referendums that Kyiv and the West described as a sham.