The hospital, the theatre, the condominium: the symbolic places chosen for Putin’s challenge-journey to the martyred city Mariupol

Obviously, the choice of places was not accidental. For his first trip to the occupied territories of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin wanted symbolic stops. He started with Crimea on the ninth anniversary of the annexation and moreover in a children’s center 24 hours after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant against him for war crimes and in particular for the deportation of Ukrainian minors .