Russian President Vladimir Putin has arrived on the peninsula in southern Ukraine. It has been exactly nine years since Russia annexed Crimea.
During the surprise visit, Putin visited, among other things, an art school in Sevastopol, the largest city in Crimea. He also received a tour from the governor of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhayev. “Our president knows how to surprise people. In a good way,” Razvozhayev wrote on the Telegram messaging service.
In December 2022, Putin was also in Crimea, then to show that the damaged Crimean Bridge, which connects the peninsula to the Russian mainland, had been repaired after a Ukrainian attack two months earlier.
Crimea is the closest front in Ukraine to which Putin has been since the invasion.