Russian President Vladimir Putin has traveled this Saturday to the Crimea to commemorate the ninth anniversary of its unilateral annexation, one day after the International Criminal Court issue an arrest warrant for the Russian leader, accusing him of war crimes.
putin ha visited a art school and a children’s centerplaces chosen in response to court actionwhich accused him on Friday of personal responsibility for kidnapping children from Ukraine during the full-scale invasion of Russia that began in February 2022.
Russia unilaterally annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, a move that has been denounced as illegal by most of the international community. Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky has demanded that Russia withdraw from the peninsula, as well as from the areas it has occupied since last year.
However, Putin has not only shown no intention of giving up the Kremlin’s gains, but has stressed the importance of keeping Crimea. “Obviously, security issues have the highest priority for Crimea and Sevastopol now,” he said, referring to Crimea’s largest city. “We will do everything necessary to reject any threat,” he insisted.
Putin has caught a plane to travel the 1,821 kilometers that separate Moscow from Sevastopol, where he has taken the wheel of the car that has taken him through the city, according to the governor installed in Moscow, Mikhail Razvozhaev. In addition to the art school and the children’s center, Putin has also visited the archaeological site of the ruins of the ancient Greek city of Chersonesos.
The arrest warrant of the International Criminal Court was the first issued against a leader of one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, who also have the right to veto (United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia and China ). The court, based in The Hague, the Netherlands, has also issued an arrest warrant against Maria Lvova-Belova, commissioner for children’s rights at the office of the president of the Russian Federation.
Moscow has not recognized the order, which Ukraine has nonetheless welcomed as a breakthrough. all despite their practical implications are limitedsince the chances of Putin being tried by the International Criminal Court are very improbable, because Moscow does not admit the jurisdiction of the court or extradite its nationals.
The head of the Kiev city administration, Serhii Popko, has reported this Saturday that the Ukrainian air defenses have shot down all the drones that were heading to the Ukrainian capital. Meanwhile, the regional governor of Lviv, Maksym Kozytskyi, has pointed out that three of six drones were shot down, and that the other three reached a border district with Poland. According to the Ukrainian air force, the attacks have been carried out from the eastern coast of the Azov Sea and the Russian province of Briansk, which borders Ukraine.
wheat deal
This Saturday, in addition, the agreement, unprecedented in times of war, which allows the flow of grain from Ukraine to countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia through the Black Sea, has been extended, as announced by the United Nations and the Turkish president , Recep Tayyip Erdogan, although its duration is unknown at the moment. The UN, Turkey and Ukraine have asked for 120 days, while Russia has confirmed that it is only willing to accept 60 days.
In this sense, the Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister, Oleksandr Kubrakov, confirmed on Saturday that the agreement will remain in force for four months. Instead, the spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, has indicated through the Russian news agency rate that Moscow “has agreed to extend the agreement for 60 days.”
