March 19, 2023 Russia-Ukraine news

Since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine, tens of thousands of Russians have flocked to Bali, the tropical Indonesian paradise.

Some 58,000 Russians visited this Southeast Asian idyll in 2022 following its post-Covid reopening, and a further 22,500 arrived in January 2023 alone, according to the Indonesian government. Adding to their number are the more than 7,000 Ukrainians who arrived in 2022, and some 2,500 in the first month of this year.

But for those fleeing the violence – or the draft – there’s trouble in paradise. 

Balinese authorities this week called for the end to Indonesia’s visa-on-arrival policy for citizens of Russia and Ukraine, citing a spate of alleged incidents involving misbehavior and various examples of visitors overstaying their visas and working illegally as hairdressers, unauthorized tour guides and taxi drivers. 

“Whenever we get reports about a foreigner behaving badly, it’s almost always Russian,” a local police officer in the town of Kuta told CNN, declining to be identified due to sensitivities surrounding the issue.

The move has been met with dismay by many Ukrainians on the island, who also claim most negative incidents involve Russians and that they are being unfairly tarred with the same brush.

Read more here.

The Ukrainian government on Sunday blasted Russian President Vladimir Putin’s surprise visit to the Russian-occupied city of Mariupol in eastern Ukraine.

Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense said it was fitting Putin visited Mariupol under the cover of dark.

“First, it is safer. Also, darkness allows him to highlight what he wants to show, and keeps the city his army completely destroyed and its few surviving inhabitants away from prying eyes,” it added.

Separately, Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser to the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, slammed the “cynicism” and “lack of remorse” shown by Putin’s visit.

“The criminal always returns to the crime scene,” Podolyak said on Twitter, adding “the murderer of thousands of Mariupol families came to admire the ruins of the city & graves. Cynicism & lack of remorse.”

The Kremlin has emphasized the surprise nature of Putin's visit to Mariupol overnight, with a spokesperson claiming parts of the visit were “spontaneous."

It came just days after the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Putin and Russian official Maria Lvova-Belova, stemming from an alleged scheme to deport Ukrainian children to Russia.

Parts of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to the Russian-occupied city of Mariupol in eastern Ukraine were “spontaneous,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told journalists during a call Sunday.

Footage released by Russian authorities showed Putin visiting Mariupol and meeting seemingly surprised residents.

According to Peskov, Putin spoke to local residents of an apartment complex and decided to visit one of the apartments, per the invitation of one of the residents. 

“Initially, the president only had planned to visit the residential complex. Putin’s exchange with residents and visiting an apartment were not planned. It was absolutely spontaneous,” Peskov claimed.

Peskov said the trip happened overnight. It is not clear exactly when it took place, although on Saturday Putin visited Crimea to mark the ninth anniversary of its annexation.

Peskov added that Putin’s trip to a military headquarters in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don was also not planned. The president attended one of the military report sessions there, the spokesperson said.

The Russian president's overnight visit to Mariupol marks his first trip to Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region since the start of Russia’s invasion.

Some key context: Putin and the Kremlin are known for creating carefully choreographed outings designed, in part, to showcase the president's strength.

Ukrainian officials have slammed the visit as a cynical ploy and akin to a criminal returning to the crime scene "under the cover of night," using darkness to hide signs that Mariupol was subject to some of the war's worst atrocities.

News of the trip comes shortly after the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Putin and Russian official Maria Lvova-Belova, stemming from an alleged scheme to deport Ukrainian children to Russia.

Mykhailo Podolyak, the adviser to the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, said that “the international warrant must be complied with” in a tweet on Sunday.

He continued: "It is symbolic that Germany was the first to make it clear that if ‘suspect Putin VV’ appears in their jurisdiction, he will be arrested immediately."

On Friday, International Criminal Court judges issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin over alleged war crimes along with his children’s rights commissioner for the “unlawful deportation” of Ukrainian children. 

Andriy Kostin, Prosecutor General of Ukraine, said that President Putin "has the official status of a suspect in the commission of an international crime."

“The world has received a signal that the Russian regime is criminal and that its leadership and accomplices will be brought to justice,” Kostin added.

Kostin, in a statement released on Telegram, said that the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office "has submitted more than 40 volumes of materials to the ICC – more than 1000 pages.”

CNN exclusively revealed the inner details of how the deal to lift the siege of Mariupol was struck.

Last April, Russian President Vladimir Putin had become increasingly frustrated by Ukrainians’ dogged holdout in the Azovstal steelworks – the last remaining point of resistance in a city otherwise taken by Russian forces.

As Putin ordered a tightening of the noose around the hulking factory complex, a small group was about to begin secret negotiations to end the siege. They involved two of Putin’s most senior generals and a Ukrainian lawmaker who once served as a Soviet paratrooper.

Read the full report on the negotiations, and who was involved in the sensitive talks, here.

Russian authorities have released footage of Putin's visit to Mariupol.

In it, he is seen landing at Mariupol airport in a helicopter, driving a car around the city, and speaking to residents who seemed surprised at his visit.

In the video, Putin, sitting in the driver’s seat along with Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin, talk about reconstruction plans for the city Russia flattened.

The pair discuss plans to build a new hospital in Mariupol. In March last year, Russia notoriously bombed a children’s and maternity hospital, while expectant mothers and medical staff were inside.

“There will be an ambulance, and all the most modern laboratories will be there,” Khusnullin says in the video.

“Everything will be fine,” Putin responds.

After looking over papers and pictures in a children's playground, Putin meets residents who seem stunned to see him.

Putin tells one man: “We need to start getting to know each other better.”

Oleksii Honcharenko, the Ukrainian politician and member of the Ukrainian delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), blasted Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “war criminal” Sunday, questioning the timing of his visit to Mariupol.

During the visit, Putin was seen speaking to residents and discussing reconstruction plans for Mariupol, including the airport. 

Mariupol was badly damaged during the Russian assault, which destroyed the Azovstal steel works, the last holdout of Ukrainian forces in the city.

It is not clear exactly when Putin's visit took place, although on Saturday Putin visited Crimea to mark the ninth anniversary of its annexation.

Putin’s visit to Mariupol comes almost ten months to the day since Russian troops claimed to have “liberated” the Azovstal Steel Plant in Mariupol, the last stand for Ukrainian forces after a bloody siege that devastated large parts of the city. 

And yet the question is why Putin waited so long to carry out what is in some ways an obvious PR exercise. 

Mariupol remains Russia’s biggest prize in this war – still the only major city it has captured, and managed to hold onto (it was forced to retreat from Kherson in November). 

Security concerns may be part of it. Earlier this month Putin cancelled a visit to a tank factory in southern Russia after Russian security officials claimed a small Ukrainian armed group crossed the border and killed two civilians. 

It’s also possible the scale of the destruction of the city meant it took this long for enough rebuilding to happen to provide an acceptable backdrop for the photo ops. All of the footage released of Putin’s visit is after dark.

But if this unannounced visit was in the works before the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant against Putin himself, that may have cemented his resolve. 

The visit provides a low-risk opportunity to signal to the world that he is not holed up in the Kremlin, and a sign to the Russian people he is in charge, youthful and vigorous enough to drive himself around the city, and heavily focused on rebuilding and integrating those illegally occupied territories of Ukraine into Russia.

Mariupol, a port city on the Sea of Azov, is located in Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast and has been under direct Russian control since May 2022.

Russian attacks on Mariupol began on February 24, 2022 – the first day of the invasion. The city was subjected to some of the war’s worst atrocities.

In March, an airstrike ripped through a maternity and children’s hospital in the city. Russian officials claimed the hospital was a justifiable military target, based on their unproven assertion that Ukrainian military targets were on site and that all patients and medical staff had left.

But footage circulating on social media showed expectant mothers being escorted out of a ruined building amid charred cars and debris.

Among the injured was a pregnant woman who was photographed being carried out on a stretcher. Neither she nor her baby could be saved, a surgeon who treated her later confirmed. The photo caused shockwaves around the world.

Also in March, Russia bombed a theater where hundreds of people had taken shelter in Mariupol. The word “children” was spelled out on two sides of the theater before it was bombed.

Of the 450,000 people who lived in the city before the war, a third had already left by mid-April, according to Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko.

Some of those who stayed took refuge in the Azovstal steel plants. To Ukrainians, Azovstal became a potent symbol of resistance, sheltering about 2,600 soldiers and civilians while the fortress-like facility was pummeled by Russian bombardment for weeks.

To Moscow, the vast site was a frustration, the last stubborn holdout in a city that its forces had otherwise taken control over weeks earlier.

"Block off the industrial site, so that not even a fly can escape," Putin said, his command broadcast on state-run television.

Yuriy Ryzhenkov, CEO of Metinvest Holding, which owns the plant, told CNN why Putin wanted to take Azovstal so badly.

“I don’t think it’s the plant that he wants. I think it’s about the symbolism that they wanted to conquer Mariupol. They never expected Mariupol to resist,” Ryzhenkov said.

Azovstal finally fell late in May, after an evacuation operation managed to rescue hundreds of Ukrainians from the plant.