Russian president Vladimir Putin has travelled to Crimea to mark the ninth anniversary of the Black Sea peninsula’s annexation from Ukraine.
Putin visited an art school and a children’s centre on Saturday, the day after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for the Russian leader, accusing him of war crimes.
The court specifically accused him on Friday of bearing personal responsibility for the abduction of children from Ukraine during Russia’s full-scale invasion of the country, which started almost 13 months ago.
Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, a move that most of the world considered illegal.
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Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has demanded that Russia withdraw from the peninsula as well as the areas it has occupied since last year.
Putin has shown no intention of relinquishing the Kremlin’s gains. Instead, he stressed on Friday the importance of holding Crimea.
“Obviously, security issues take top priority for Crimea and Sevastopol now,” he said, referring to Crimea’s largest city.
“We will do everything needed to fend off any threats.”
The ICC’s arrest warrant was the first issued against a leader of one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.
The court, which is based in The Hague, Netherlands, also issued a warrant for the arrest of Maria Lvova-Belova, the commissioner for children’s rights in the office of the president of the Russian Federation.
The move was immediately dismissed by Moscow and welcomed by Ukraine as a major breakthrough.
Its practical implications, however, could be limited as the chances of Putin facing trial at the ICC are highly unlikely because Moscow does not recognise the court’s jurisdiction or extradite its nationals.
Meanwhile, a deal allowing the export of Ukrainian grain from Black Sea ports that was due to expire on Saturday has been renewed, Turkey’s president Tayyip Erdogan said, while a Ukrainian government minister said the extension had been agreed for 120 days.
“The deal for the grain corridor was due to expire today. As a result of our talks with the two sides, we have secured an extension to this deal,” Erdogan said in a speech in the western city of Canakkale, without specifying the length of the agreed extension.
Ukrainian minister for infrastructure Oleksandr Kubrakov said the deal had been extended for 120 days.
The pact was brokered with Russia and Ukraine by the United Nations and Turkey in July – and renewed for a further 120 days in November – to combat a global food crisis that was fuelled in part by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Black Sea blockade.
Russia previously called for renewing the deal for only 60 days, half the term of the previous renewal period, while Ukraine was insisting on a 120-day renewal.
Renewal of the grain deal comes as Ukraine was attacked by 16 Russian drones on Friday night, the Ukrainian air force said in the early hours of Saturday.
Writing on Telegram, the air force command said that 11 out of 16 drones were shot down “in the central, western and eastern regions”.
Among areas targeted were the capital, Kyiv, and western Lviv province.
The head of the Kyiv city administration, Serhii Popko, said Ukrainian air defences shot down all drones heading for the Ukrainian capital, while Lviv regional governor Maksym Kozytskyi said on Saturday that three of six drones were shot down, with the other three hitting a district bordering Poland.
[ Arrest warrant for Putin for war crimes in Ukraine welcomed in UK and USOpens in new window ]
According to the Ukrainian air force, the attacks were carried out from the eastern coast of the Sea of Azov and Russia’s Bryansk province, which borders Ukraine.
The Ukrainian military additionally said in its regular update on Saturday that Russian forces over the previous 24 hours launched 34 air strikes, one missile strike and 57 rounds of anti-aircraft fire.
The Facebook update said that falling debris hit southern Kherson province, damaging seven houses and a nursery.
According to the Ukrainian statement, Russia is continuing to concentrate its efforts on offensive operations in Ukraine’s industrial east, focusing attacks on Lyman, Bakhmut, Avdiivka, Marinka and Shakhtarsk in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk province.
Pavlo Kyrylenko, regional governor of the Donetsk province, said one person was killed and three wounded when 11 towns and villages in the province were shelled on Friday.
Further west, Russian rockets hit a residential area overnight Friday in the city of Zaporizhzhia, the regional capital of the partially occupied province of the same name.
No casualties were reported, but houses were damaged and a restaurant destroyed, Anatoliy Kurtev of the Zaporizhzhia city council said.
UK military officials said on Saturday that Russia is likely to widen conscription.
In its latest intelligence update, the ministry of defence said that deputies in the Russian Duma, the lower house of Russia’s parliament, introduced a bill on Monday to change the conscription age for men to 21-30, from the current 18-27.
The ministry said that, at the moment, many men aged 18-21 claim exemption from military service because they are in higher education.
The change would mean that they would eventually still have to serve. It said the law will likely be passed and come into force in January 2024. – Agencies