Stuff Digital Edition

Putin visits site of ‘war crime’

Vladimir Putin yesterday made a last-minute visit to Crimea to tour a ‘‘children’s palace’’ he commissioned, just a day after being labelled a war criminal for abducting thousands of boys and girls from Ukraine.

The Russian president ostensibly arranged the trip to mark the ninth anniversary of his annexation of the Ukrainian territory in 2014, but it was widely seen as a pointed response to the International Criminal Court’s decision on Saturday to issue an arrest warrant for him.

‘‘The president knows how to surprise,’’ said Mikhail Razvozhayev, the Kremlininstalled governor of the region. ‘‘Everything had been prepared for a video-conference when before you know it he comes down here personally. By car.’’

Putin had ordered the Korsun

Children’s Centre to be built in May 2021, seven months before his planned full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the start of the mass abduction of Ukrainian children.

The four-storey ‘‘Byzantinestyle’’ building set in parkland on the lush Black Sea coast has been completed but isn’t yet open. Its website said that it hosts a theatre, a cinema, more than 500 classrooms and can sleep up to 300 children.

In one room, colourful beanbags were scattered around and in another touchscreen information monitors had been set up, according to an earlier video posted online of the facility.

In footage posted of his visit, Putin could be seen dressed in a dark blue zip-up jacket over a blue T-shirt. He walked with a slight limp and his hair looked grey and thin.

He could be seen admiring artworks and sculptures, asking questions as he wandered through various rooms and inspecting equipment. He made no official statement.

Metropolitan Tikhon, a senior Russian Orthodox priest who is known to be a close associate of the Russian president since the 1990s, led Putin on the tour.

‘‘Here will be a very interesting museum, a very interesting exhibition about the history of Crimea from ancient times to the present day,’’ the Russian Orthodox priest said at one point.

At the end of the footage he got into the driving seat of a 4x4 car with blacked-out windows.

Putin hasn’t celebrated the annexation of the peninsula in Crimea for three years. He last visited the territory in December when he drove a car across the 20km bridge that links mainland Russia with the peninsula after it had been patched up following a Ukrainian attack two months earlier. It is not clear exactly what the children’s centre will be used for but Crimea is reported to be a major thoroughfare for children taken from Ukraine and the Korsun Children’s Centre could potentially be used as part of that. The Kremlin has previously been accused of pushing Ukrainian children through Russian indoctrination centres.

World

en-nz

2023-03-20T07:00:00.0000000Z

2023-03-20T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://fairfaxmedia.pressreader.com/article/281835762938955

Stuff Limited