Ukraine today accused Vladimir Putin of visiting the scene of his “crimes”, after the Kremlin announced the Russian president’s surprise visit to areas held by Russian forces in the south and east of the country.

This trip “constitutes a ‘special tour’ of the perpetrator of mass murders in the occupied and ravaged territories to enjoy the crimes” committed by the Russian forces, the advisor to the Ukrainian presidency Mykhailo Podoliak notes in a post on Twitter.

Earlier today the Kremlin announced that Russian President Vladimir Putin visited two areas of Ukraine occupied by Russian forces.

The Kremlin statement noted that the Russian president met mainly with military commanders in the Kherson region, in southern Ukraine, and Luhansk, in the east.

For security reasons, Putin was not accompanied on his visit to these two regions in Ukraine by the Russian defense minister and the chief of the general staff of the Russian armed forces, again according to the Kremlin, while his spokesman Dmitry Peskov clarified that the visit of the Russian president took place yesterday, Monday.

Moscow has announced the annexation of these two regions, which its forces however only partially hold. The Russian army suffered a major blow last year in Kherson, when it was forced to leave the regional capital of the same name.

Shortly after the announcement of Putin’s visit, Kiev also issued a statement saying Russian shelling had injured six people in the city of Kherson.

This is the second visit in a month by the Russian president to a zone occupied by Russian forces in Ukraine.

“The supreme commander of the armed forces of the Russian Federation went to the general staff of the ‘Dniepr’ military unit” in the Kherson region, according to the Kremlin.

Putin met there with the commander of the Russian Airborne Forces, General Mikhail Teplinsky, and other high-ranking military officials to discuss the situation in the Kherson and Zaporizhia regions.

The zone is often cited by analysts as a possible focus of a spring counteroffensive by Ukrainian forces, who want to retake territory captured by Russian forces.

This area is of particular strategic importance, because the lands seized by Moscow in the Zaporizhia and Kherson regions form a land continuum between Russia and the Crimean peninsula, which Moscow annexed in 2014. Dismantling this land bridge would was a significant blow to Moscow.

According to the Kremlin, Putin also expressed his wishes to the soldiers on the occasion of Orthodox Easter on Sunday and offered them religious icons.

“It is important for me to know your point of view on the situation, to listen to you, to exchange information,” the Russian president said in a video broadcast by the Kremlin.

The Russian army withdrew from the city of Kherson, capital of the Kherson region, in November 2022 to deploy to the other side of the Dnieper, the river that now lies between Russian and Ukrainian forces.

In Luhansk, Putin met with members of the general staff of the Russian National Guard deployed in the region, according to the Kremlin.

In March, Putin made surprise visits to Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014, and Mariupol, a major Ukrainian port that Russian forces had besieged for months and took control of in May 2022.