MOSCOW (Reuters) Russian President Vladimir Putin has met with commanders in two regions of Ukraine said to have been annexed by Moscow. Meanwhile, Russian forces stepped up artillery and air strikes on the devastated Ukrainian city of Bakhmut .
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited troops in the eastern town of Avdiuka, about 70 kilometers (43 miles) southwest of Bakhmut, and was briefed on the situation on the battlefield, his office said.
The Kremlin said Putin attended a military command meeting in southern Ukraine’s Kherson region on Monday and visited the National Guard headquarters in eastern Luhansk.
Putin heard briefed reports from the commanders of the Airborne Forces and the Dnieper Army Group, as well as other senior officers, about the situation in the southern Kherson and Zaporizhia regions.
According to the Kremlin, neither Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu nor Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov accompanied Putin on the trip for security reasons. A senior adviser to Ukrainian President Mikhail Podlyak has ridiculed Putin’s visit as a “special tour” for the author of genocide in occupied and devastated territories, enjoying the crimes of his minions for the last time .
Kiev and the West have accused Russian forces of committing war crimes in occupied Ukrainian territory, a charge Moscow denies.
Kherson, Zaporizhia, Luhansk and Donetsk are the four he declared to have been annexed to Ukraine by Putin last September following allegations of a sham referendum. Russian troops only partially control his four regions.
Russian troops withdrew from the region’s capital, Kherson, last November and are strengthening their positions on the opposite bank of the Dnipro River in anticipation of a Ukrainian counterattack this spring. While numerous Western leaders have traveled to Kiev for talks with President Zelensky since Russian forces invaded 14 months ago, Putin has rarely visited parts of Russia-controlled Ukraine.
Last month, he visited Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in 2014, and the southeastern city of Mariupol in the Donetsk region.
The Russian winter offensive made little headway, and its armies were bogged down in a series of battles in the east and south, but progress was slow and costly on both sides.
The G7 foreign ministers’ meeting in Japan on Tuesday condemned Russia’s plans to deploy so-called short-range tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, an ally of Moscow that borders Ukraine.
In a communiqué released at the end of his three-day conference in Japan, the G7 Foreign Ministers said:
“Russia’s irresponsible nuclear rhetoric and Russia’s threat to deploy nuclear weapons in Belarus are unacceptable.”
“Russia’s use of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons would have serious consequences,” they said. The G7 includes the US, Japan, Germany, UK, France, Italy and Canada, all of which have imposed economic sanctions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The war in Ukraine has killed tens of thousands of people, leveled cities, displaced millions from their homes and disrupted the global security order. One reason for this is that Russia has strengthened its relations with non-Western countries, including China.
Russian Defense Minister Shoigu told Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu during a meeting in Moscow on Tuesday that military cooperation between the two countries is a “stabilizing” force in the world and will help reduce the likelihood of conflict.
Li said his visit aims to show the world that China is steadfastly intent on stepping up strategic cooperation with Russia, TASS News Agency reported.
