Putin rallies his troops for second visit to Ukraine in two months

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin visited the command posts of the Kremlin forces fighting in Ukraine on Tuesday in an apparent effort to rally his troops as war is approaching its 14th month and kyiv is preparing a possible counteroffensive with weapons supplied by the West.

A video released by the Kremlin and broadcast on Russian state television shows Putin arriving by helicopter at the command post of Russian forces in the southern Kherson region and then flying to the Russian National Guard headquarters in the eastern Luhansk region. .

Dressed in a dark suit and in an apparent show of authority, Putin appeared to chair meetings with his top military commanders. It was his second trip in two months to Russian-occupied territories in the neighboring country.

The locations of the military headquarters in the Kherson and Luhansk regions were not disclosed, so it was not possible to assess how close they are to the front line.

Russia’s war in Ukraine has stalled amid heavy fighting in the east of the country, particularly around the city of Bakhmut, which for eight and a half months has been the scene of the longest and bloodiest fighting of the war.

In both places, Putin congratulated the military on Orthodox Easter, which was celebrated on Sunday, and presented them with icons.

Russia annexed the Kherson and Luhansk regions along with the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions in September in a move that much of the world rejected as illegal.

It was impossible to independently verify the authenticity of the video images.

Last month, Putin visited the Russian-controlled Azov Sea port city of Mariupol, which was captured by Russian troops in May after two months of fierce fighting.

Putin’s trips to the military headquarters come as Ukraine prepares for a new counteroffensive to retake the occupied territories.

Ukrainian officials have said they are buying time by exhausting Russian forces in battle as kyiv prepares a counteroffensive. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has argued that if Russia wins the battle of Bakhmut, it could allow Putin to start building international support for a deal that will require Ukraine to make unacceptable compromises to end the war.

Oleksiy Danilov, Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, told The Associated Press in an interview in kyiv that Ukraine’s allies are helping the government achieve the level of technical equipment needed to launch the attack, delivering heavy armored vehicles and ammunition.

He expressed his confidence that Ukraine will be able to return all its occupied territories.

“We are going to defeat Russia,” he said. “If you have a strong inner spirit, you will definitely win. And we always had it strong. This is something that always bothered the Russians.”

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Follow AP’s coverage of the war on https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine