Vladimir Putin visited Mariupol on the night of Saturday, March 18, TASS reports citing Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. “It was late, late yesterday and tonight,” Peskov said.
He also stated that Putin traveled around Mariupol without a motorcade, he was accompanied by a "very compact group of cars."
Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin, who accompanied Putin, told him that all the destruction in Mariupol was the result of the actions of the Ukrainian army. “Where we were advancing, there were no shell strikes at all. From their side, they hit us with direct fire with tanks, you can clearly see how they were retreating – they hit them right at home. <…> I'm telling you as a builder, I've seen every house. They hit the houses with direct fire,” Khusnullin said.
On the morning of March 19, Russian media reported that Putin had visited Mariupol. This is the first message about his trip to Donbass. In early March, the Ministry of Defense reported that Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu visited the occupied city.
Mariupol was captured by the Russian army in May 2022 after a two-month siege. The mayor of the city, Vadim Boychenko, said in early June that Russian troops had destroyed half of the multi-storey buildings: “There are 2,600 buildings in the city. They destroyed 50% to ashes.”