Putin meets top commanders during surprise visit to Ukraine – live news

Russian president Vladimir Putin has met with the top brass leading his military operation in Ukraine, state media said today.

The leader, facing an arrest warrant for war crimes, also met with chief of the general staff Valery Gerasimov who is in charge of Moscow’s war in Ukraine.

The meeting took place at the Rostov-on-Don command post in southern Russia, reported TASS news agency.

Countries that are supplying Russia with weapons can only be “marginals in the free world”, Volodymyr Zelenksy has said.

The Ukraine president made the comments in a video shared overnight on Twitter as fighting continued on the front line.

“All those who produce weapons for terror against Ukraine, who help Russia incite aggression, in particular by supplying Shahed drones, who support Russia’s destruction of international law, can only be marginals for the world”, he said.

Trainspotter Mikhail Korotkov’s blog was his passion – but shutting up shop and leaving home felt like the only option after pictures he posted of his favourite target attracted some unwanted attention, finds Robyn Dixon.

Germany will have to arrest Russian president Vladimir Putin if he enters its territory and the International Criminal Court requires the contracting nation for enforcement, the country’s justice minister Marco Buschmann said today.

An arrest warrant for Mr Putin has been issued by the ICC in The Hague, which accuses him of war crimes by taking hundreds of Ukrainian children from orphanages.

The court accuses Mr Putin and his children’s rights commissioner, Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, of “unlawful deportation” of children “from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation”.

President Xi Jinping is an unlikely sort of peacemaker. His government has been responsible for unspeakable cruelties against the Muslim Uyghur people in Xinjiang region, the suppression of protest, the rule of law and democracy in Hong Kong, and the routine abuse of human rights across the entire people’s republic.

His armed forces have been buzzing and intimidating Taiwan for many years, as well as menacing neighbours in the South China Sea. Yet now the tyrannical supreme leader of China is going around the world brokering peace deals. It is a conundrum.

Mr Xi is in fact on something of a roll. Fresh from getting Saudi Arabia and Iran to restore diplomatic relations, and thus begin to end their pitiless proxy war in Yemen, he is off to Moscow next week to preach the ways of peace to Vladimir Putin, a tough customer.

Read The Independent’s Editorial here:

Vladimir Putin visited a family in their home In the Nevsky district of Mariupol during his visit to the Ukrainian city now under Russia’s control, Russian media reported.

The new residential neighbourhood has been built by Russian military with first people moving in last September.

Residents have been “actively” returning, Russia’s deputy prime minister Marat Khusnullin, who accompanied the leader, was cited as saying by Russian agencies.

Mariupol had a population of half a million people before the war and was home to the Azovstal steel plant, one of Europe’s largest.

“The downtown has been badly damaged,” the deputy PM said. “We want to finish (reconstruction) of the centre by the end of the year, at least the facade part. The centre is very beautiful.”

Russian media broadcast videos showing the Russian leader driving a car at night through a built-up area as well as walking into what media said was the philharmonic, restored in just three months.

There was also no immediate reaction to the visit from Kyiv.

Russian forces fighting in Ukraine are “highly unlikely” to capture its previously planned major objectives in the coming months of grinding war, the British defence ministry said today.

It pointed to a decree published on 3 March where authorities in the Russian-controlled part of Zaporizhzhia Oblast declared occupied Melitopol as the oblast capital.

“The Russian-installed head of the oblast, Evgeniy Balitskiy, said that this was a temporary measure until the city of Zaporizhzhia was controlled by Russia,” the ministry noted.

It added: “The quiet declaration of an alternative capital is likely tacit acknowledgement within the Russian system that its forces are highly unlikely to seize previously planned major objectives in the near future.”

Zaporizhzhia is one of the four oblasts Mr Putin claimed to have annexed as part of the Russian Federation on 30 September last year.

But the invading nation has never occupied Zaporizhzhia city, a major industrial centre of 700,000 people, which is approximately 35km from the current front line, the MoD pointed out.

Russian president Vladimir Putin made a surprise visit to Crimea on Saturday to mark the ninth anniversary of the Black Sea peninsula’s annexation from Ukraine.

His trip came a day after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant on charges of war crimes, alleging he bears personal responsibility for the abductions of children from Ukraine during Russia’s invasion that began nearly 13 months ago.

In Sevastopol, Crimea’s largest city, Mr Putin met Moscow-installed governor Mikhail Razvozhaev, with whom he visited an art school and a children’s centre that are part of a project to develop a historical park on the site of an ancient Greek colony, Russian state news agencies said.

Catch up on the major events of Saturday:

For Mikhail Korotkov, a lifelong trainspotter, one unusual train on Russia’s railways became an obsession – like stalking a rare, shy beast.

Korotkov, 31, spent years tracking and photographing president Vladimir Putin’s hush-hush deluxe armored train. He was the first enthusiast to post an image of the train – sleek sliver with red-and-grey detailing, often pulled by multiple boxy locomotives – online in 2018. “Mere mortals do not travel on such a train,” Korotkov wrote.

Finding and photographing the train was both terrifying and exhilarating. To Korotkov, it was like a creepy “ghost train”, with a secret timetable, no identifying locomotive numbers and its windows always screened. At least, one of the rail cars has an unusual dome on top – believed to house special communications equipment.

“I was so deep in my hobby. I tried to get really rare pictures,” Korotkov recalls. “And for me, the challenge was so huge that I was not thinking about consequences.”

The Russian president is known to be fanatically cautious – detractors would say paranoid – when it comes to security.

Robyn Dixon takes a deep dive into the dramatic journey of one bold trainspotter:

Vladimir Putin visited the Russia-occupied city of Mariupol in Ukraine on Sunday, reported news agency TASS.

Mariupol in Donetsk region was captured by Russian forces after a bloody battle in May last year and has remained under the control of Moscow’s fighters since.

The Russian president was seen driving a car around the city as he visited several districts.

He also made stops along the way and spoke to the residents, reported TASS news agency.

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