President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia made his first trip to territory captured by his forces since they invaded Ukraine more than a year ago, traveling to the ravaged city of Mariupol late on Saturday in what appeared to be a defiant gesture just a day after an international court issued a warrant for his arrest for war crimes.
Mariupol became a symbol of Ukraine’s agony when Russian forces laid waste to it with artillery starting soon after the invasion. It later evolved into a beacon of Ukrainian resistance as, for weeks, the city’s last defenders endured a bitter siege at a steel plant.
An adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said that Mr. Putin’s visit showed a lack of remorse. “The criminal always returns to the crime scene,” the adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, wrote on Twitter.
The Kremlin said on Sunday that Mr. Putin had flown by helicopter to the airport in Mariupol and toured several neighborhoods. It said that he inspected sites where Russia is rebuilding after its relentless bombardment nearly flattened the city and spoke with residents. Images released by Russian television showed Mr. Putin touring sites in darkness.
Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, described the visit as a “full-scale working trip” and stressed that many aspects of it were not planned. There was “no motorcade as such,” he said, adding that Mr. Putin drove himself through the city.
The battle for Mariupol, a city with a prewar population of around 400,000, was marked by wanton destruction by Russian forces, who bombed a maternity hospital and at times opened fire on apartment buildings with tanks from close range. It also featured the deadliest single assault on civilians during the war, when Russian forces bombed a regional theater where residents had taken shelter. The United Nations said that at least 1,300 died in the siege of the city but that the true toll was likely to have been thousands higher.
The visit to Mariupol by Mr. Putin — who now stands accused by the International Criminal Court of presiding over the abduction of Ukrainian children — was his second unannounced trip of the weekend to parts of Ukraine that Russian forces have occupied. On Saturday, he went to Crimea in a visit timed to coincide with the ninth anniversary of the peninsula’s annexation.
But the visit to Mariupol was the closest Mr. Putin has come to the front lines since the start of the full-scale invasion last February; the city is around 50 miles southeast of the town of Vuhledar, where Russian forces sustained heavy losses just weeks ago and where fierce fighting continues. Mr. Putin has set the capture of the entire eastern Donbas region as his military’s primary objective. Since Mariupol is in Donetsk Province, part of Donbas, his visit was the first to a region at the heart of the war.
Mr. Zelensky, by contrast, has made several visits to the front line and to recently recaptured parts of the country. In December, for example, he went to the embattled city of Bakhmut — another city in Donetsk that also has been held up as a symbol of Ukrainian resistance.
The timing of Mr. Putin’s trip could be interpreted as an affront to the I.C.C., which on Friday issued the warrant for his arrest over the taking of Ukrainian children. The warrant claims that Mr. Putin bears individual criminal responsibility for the deportation of the thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia since last year’s invasion. The Ukrainian authorities have said that many abducted children were from Mariupol — and Mr. Putin’s weekend trip to Crimea notably featured a visit to a children’s center.
While the I.C.C. warrant could impact Mr. Putin’s ability to travel overseas and adds to his isolation from the West, the Kremlin has said it considers the warrant meaningless and vowed not to cooperate.
On Monday, Mr. Putin will host Moscow’s most important ally, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, giving the Russian leader an opportunity to reiterate a theme the Kremlin has emphasized since the war’s start: that international support for Ukraine is limited to Western countries.
China has said the three-day visit by Mr. Xi offers Beijing an opportunity to push Mr. Putin into peace talks and has hinted that a call with Mr. Zelensky could follow. But the United States has argued that China is considering whether to provide Russia with much-needed supplies for the war. Beijing has denied the accusation, which has helped drive relations between China and the United States to their lowest in decades.
There was no immediate comment about Mr. Putin’s visit to Mariupol from Mr. Zelensky, who has vowed to recapture all of the territory lost to Russia, including Crimea. Ukraine’s armed forces are expected to launch an offensive this spring, which some Ukrainian officials have said could involve attempting to cut off Crimea from the land that Russia holds in Donbas by pushing south toward the city of Melitopol, which is around 100 miles west of Mariupol.
For its push, Ukraine will use the latest influx of military aid including precision rockets capable of striking targets dozens of miles away that have been supplied by the United States and allies in Europe.
