Putin and Zelensky rally troops with war poised for new phase
KYIV, Ukraine — Russian President Vladimir Putin visited command posts of his forces fighting in Ukraine for the second time in two months, officials said Tuesday, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made his latest trip near the front line.
The visits — on different days and in different provinces — sought to stiffen the resolve of soldiers as the war approaches its 14th month and as Kyiv readies a possible counteroffensive with Western-supplied weapons.
Some of the most significant of those weapons appeared to have recently arrived in Ukraine. Germany’s official federal government website on Tuesday listed a Patriot surface-to-air guided missile system as among the military items delivered to Ukraine within the last week.
Ukraine has been pressing allies for months to send Patriots and other air defense systems, and Germany’s appeared to be the first to have arrived. Ukrainian air force spokesman Yurii Ihnat declined to confirm Tuesday that a Patriot had arrived, local media outlet RBC-Ukraine reported, but said that receiving the missiles would be a landmark event, allowing Ukrainians to knock down Russian targets from a greater distance.
Elsewhere, Kremlin video showed Putin arriving by helicopter at Russian forces’ command post in southern Ukraine’s Kherson province, then flying to the headquarters of the Russian National Guard in Luhansk province, in the country’s east. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the visits took place Monday.
Dressed in a dark suit, Putin appeared to chair meetings with his military top brass during both stops. The locations of the military headquarters weren’t disclosed, making it impossible to assess how close they were to the front line. The authenticity of the video footage could not be independently verified.
On Tuesday, Zelensky made his latest trip to visit units in Avdiivka, a city in Donetsk province where fierce battles are taking place. He heard firsthand reports about the battlefield situation and handed out awards.
Zelensky has stepped up visits to areas of his country feeling the brunt of Russia’s invasion, shuttling across the country, often by train. As with Putin, the Ukrainian leader’s wartime trips usually aren’t publicized until after he has left an area.
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While official coverage of Putin’s trip showed the Russian leader in mostly formal and ceremonious settings, photographs issued by Zelensky’s office showed the Ukrainian president taking selfies and eating cake with soldiers.
Russia’s war in Ukraine has become largely deadlocked amid heavy fighting in the east, particularly around the Donestk province city of Bakhmut, which for 8½ months has been the stage for the war’s longest and bloodiest battle.
Kherson and Luhansk, along with Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia provinces, are four areas that Russia illegally annexed in September following local referendums that Ukraine and the West denounced as shams. Ukrainian presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak was scathing in his criticism of Putin’s trip, accusing the Russian leader of “degradation” and being the author of “mass murders” in the war.
Both then and now, large parts of Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, as well as some areas of Luhansk province, have remained under Ukrainian control. In November, Russian forces abandoned territory in Kherson province, including the region’s namesake capital.
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In a parallel development, the Moscow-appointed governor of the occupied part of Donetsk province, Denis Pushilin, went to Minsk, the capital of neighboring Belarus, and won pledges of support from Belarus’ President Alexander Lukashenko, a Putin ally.
“The Kremlin forces Minsk to get involved in the war more actively in order to pressure Ukraine with threats of Belarus joining,” Belarussian political analyst Valery Karbalevich said in a telephone interview. “It is clear that Pushilin’s visit to Minsk has been synchronized with Putin’s trip to the occupied Ukrainian regions and aims to show that the Belarussian threat hasn’t gone away.”
In both locations he visited, Putin congratulated the military divisions on Orthodox Easter, which was celebrated Sunday, and presented them with icons of the faith. Speaking to senior officers at the Kherson headquarters, Putin handed them a copy of an Orthodox icon he said had belonged to a famous Russian general of the 19th century.
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The senior officers present at the meetings reflected which were currently in favor with Putin. Col. Gen. Mikhail Teplinsky, the chief of Russia’s airborne troops, was among the top generals at the Kherson base.
Teplinsky, a career officer who rose from lieutenant to become chief of the elite military branch, is known for being popular with his troops. However, last fall he was temporarily relieved from his position amid a spat with Russia’s top military brass.
He was restored to the job earlier this year, and his attendance at the meeting with Putin indicated that he was back in favor.
A senior officer who greeted Putin in the Luhansk region, Col. Gen. Alexander Lapin, had also been relieved of his duties as commanding officer of Russian troops in Ukraine’s northeast after he was blamed for a hasty Russian pullback from parts of the Kharkiv region in the face of a Ukrainian counteroffensive in September.
A court in Moscow has convicted a top Kremlin foe on charges of treason and denigrating the Russian military and sentenced him to 25 years in prison.
He later was named chief of staff of the ground forces, and his meeting with Putin on Tuesday signaled that Lapin had the president’s trust.
Putin’s and Pushilin’s trips came as Ukraine is preparing a new counteroffensive in an effort to reclaim occupied territories, possibly using the newly arrived Patriot.
In addition to Germany, the United States and Netherlands have pledged to provide Patriots, and a group of 65 Ukrainian soldiers were trained in their use last month in Oklahoma.
The Patriot is a surface-to-air guided missile system first deployed in the 1980s that can target aircraft, cruise missiles and shorter-range ballistic missiles. A Patriot missile battery typically includes six mobile launchers, a mobile radar, a power generator and an engagement control center. Zelensky has said Ukraine needs at least 20 Patriot batteries.
Ukrainian officials have said they’re depleting Russian forces in eastern Ukraine while preparing for a counteroffensive.
Meanwhile, at least three civilians were killed and 11 were wounded in Ukraine between Monday and Tuesday, according to Ukraine’s presidential office, which said that most of the casualties were in the Donbas region. Six people were reported wounded in artillery fire in Kherson city.
In another in a series of possible cross-border attacks into Russia, a drone that a Russian official said was from Ukraine hit a military office in the Bryansk town of Novozybkov. Gov. Alexander Bogomaz said on Telegram that the building was damaged but that no one was hurt. Ukrainian officials, in keeping with past practice, didn’t comment on the incident.
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