Woman shouts ‘it’s all lies’ when Putin stages visit to bombed Ukrainian city

Putin defied his international warrant for arrest as he visited the occupied Ukrainian city in a surprise visit yesterday.

In television footage showing the Russian President meeting supposedly grateful Ukrainians, a woman’s voice can be heard shouting: ‘It’s all lies, it’s all just for show.’

The heckling, which seemed to have come from a nearby building, prompted Mr Putin’s security team to begin frantically looking around trying to find the source of the disturbance.

The Russian President’s official visits are almost always carefully stage-managed, and this was particularly true of his trip to Mariupol, a city that was razed to the ground by Russia’s forces during a months-long siege.

Russian news agencies said that he was in the city which became a worldwide symbol of defiance after outgunned and outmanned Ukrainian forces held out in a steel mill there for nearly three months.

It was eventually taken over by the Kremlin in May.

On Saturday Putin travelled to Crimea, a short distance south-west of Mariupol, to mark the ninth anniversary of the Black Sea peninsula’s annexation from Ukraine.

The visits came days after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for the Russian leader accusing him of war crimes.

Mr Putin arrived in Mariupol by helicopter and then drove himself around the city’s ‘memorial sites’, concert hall and coastline.

They said Mr Putin also met with residents in the city’s Nevskyi district.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnulin made clear that Russia is in Mariupol to stay.

Source of data and images: metro