Moment fearless woman shouts ‘Everything is a lie, it’s all for show’ at Putin in Mariupol

This is the moment a fearless Ukrainian woman shouted “It’s all lies, it’s all show” at Vladimir Putin during his visit to the occupied city of Mariupol on Sunday.

The video shows the brave Mariupol resident interrupting the Russian leader as he was putting on a show meeting supposedly grateful Ukrainian civilians in Mariupol.

Risking arrest and the wrath of Putin’s security forces, the woman can be heard shouting: “It’s all lies, it’s all a hoax.”

The woman’s jeers, which seem to come from a nearby building, cause Putin’s security guards to start looking around frantically to identify where the woman’s voice is coming from.

However, security officers are unable to identify the brave Ukrainian woman.

In the video, Putin continued to talk to supposed Mariupol residents outside what looked like a newly built residential complex, asking them if they liked everyone.

Despite background boos, the ‘locals’ nodded vigorously, saying they lived in Mariupol, a city in southern Ukraine that was razed to the ground by invading Russian forces.

Putin’s visit to Mariupol marks the Russian despot’s first trip to Ukrainian territory that Moscow illegally annexed in September.

He arrived in Mariupol late on Saturday after visiting Crimea, southwest of Mariupol, to mark the ninth anniversary of Ukraine’s annexation of the Black Sea peninsula, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Sunday.

After Putin’s visit, Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhaylo Podolyak said on Sunday that Putin had returned to see the city’s “graves” after Mariupol faced some of the worst shelling seen during the invasion so far.

‘The criminal always returns to the scene of the crime… the murderer of thousands of Mariupol families came to admire the ruins of the city and (their) graves. Cynicism and lack of remorse,” Podolyak said on Twitter.

Mariupol became a global symbol of resistance after outgunned and outmanned Ukrainian forces held out at a steel plant there for nearly three months before Moscow finally seized control of it in May. Much of the city was reduced to rubble by Russian bombing.

The timing of Putin’s ‘spontaneous’ visit to disputed areas will raise concerns in the West as it took place just days after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for the Russian leader accusing him of war crimes.

Speaking to the state agency RIA-Novosti, Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin made it clear that Russia was in Mariupol to stay. He said the government expected to finish rebuilding its dilapidated center by the end of the year.

‘People have started to come back. When they saw that the reconstruction was underway, people began to return actively,” Khusnullin told RIA.

When Moscow fully captured the city in May, approximately 100,000 people remained, out of a pre-war population of 450,000. Many were trapped without food, water, heat or electricity. The relentless shelling left rows of buildings smashed or emptied.

Mariupol’s plight first came to international attention with a Russian airstrike on a maternity hospital on March 9, 2022, less than two weeks after the invasion of Ukraine began.

A week later, some 300 people were reported killed in the bombing of a theater that was being used as the largest bomb shelter in the city. Evidence obtained by The Associated Press suggested the actual death toll could be closer to 600.

A small group of Ukrainian fighters held out for 83 days at the sprawling Azovstal steel plant east of Mariupol before surrendering. Their stubborn defense tied down Russian forces and came to symbolize Ukrainian tenacity in the face of Moscow aggression.

Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, a move that most of the world denounced as illegal, and in September moved to officially claim four regions in southern and eastern Ukraine as Russian territory, following referendums that Kiev and the West described as like a farce

The ICC charged Putin on Friday with personal responsibility for the abductions of children from Ukraine. UN investigators also said there was evidence of the forcible transfer of “hundreds” of Ukrainian children to Russia.

According to Ukrainian government figures, more than 16,000 children have been deported to Russian-controlled territories or to Russia itself, many from Mariupol.

While kyiv welcomed the ICC move, the chances of Putin facing trial are slim because Moscow does not recognize the court’s jurisdiction or extradite its citizens.

Ukrainian officials reported Sunday that at least three civilians have been killed and 19 wounded by Russian shelling in the past 24 hours. The deaths occurred in the eastern Donetsk region amid fierce battles for control of the city of Bakhmut, according to Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko on Ukrainian television.

Kharkiv regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said in a Telegram update that a 51-year-old woman was “fighting for her life” after being hit by shrapnel when Russian troops fired on the border town of Dvorichna.

Ukraine’s top presidential adviser Andriy Yermak said Ukrainian troops were holding the line near Bakhmut, a key target of a long and hard Russian offensive, adding that the enemy’s plan to occupy the city “is now falling apart.” “.

The spokesman for the eastern Ukrainian forces said Russian troops are “tactically unable to complete” the capture of Bakhmut.

“Yes, there are very active battles, (the Russians) continue to make several dozen attacks by inertia, but they suffer huge losses,” Serhii Cherevaty said on Ukrainian television, adding that the Ukrainian defenses are “bleeding the enemy dry, breaking their fight “. spirit’.

Seizing Bakhmut would give the Kremlin a battlefield victory after months of setbacks, and could pave the way for Russia to threaten other Ukrainian strongholds in the region, including Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.

Russian forces shelled a house in Bilozerka, a western suburb of the southern city of Kherson, and a woman who was rescued from the rubble was taken to hospital, the Kherson regional military administration wrote on Telegram.