Russian defence minister visits destroyed Ukraine city Mariupol

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu has visited the war-battered city of Mariupol in southern Ukraine, his ministry announced Monday, one year after his forces besieged the city, levelling it to the ground.

His visit comes as Russia forces are closing in on Bakhmut, a city in eastern Ukraine that has become the stage of the longest-running battle of Russia’s intervention in Ukraine.

The ministry said Shoigu, one of the highest-ranking officials to visit east Ukraine, had toured the destroyed port city to oversee reconstruction efforts.

Shoigu “inspected work carried out by the… defence ministry to restore infrastructure in Donbas,” the ministry said, without specifying the timing of the visit.

He visited a medical centre built by the military, a dispatch centre of the emergency situations ministry as well as a newly constructed district with a dozen five-story residential buildings.

Russia launched a scorched-earth campaign against Mariupol at the start of its campaign last year, destroying the Azovstal steel works, which was the last holdout of Ukraine forces in the city.

Investigative teams linked to jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny have reported that defence ministry officials are profiting personally from reconstruction efforts in Mariupol.

The ministry’s announcement comes one day after it said Shoigu had met with Russian soldiers deployed to a “command post in” eastern Ukraine.

Russia’s gruelling effort to capture Bakhmut has been spearheaded on the ground by the Russian mercenary group Wagner.

Its founder, Kremlin-ally Yevgeny Prigozhin, routinely criticises the defence ministry in social media videos allegedly filmed from the front.

Analysts say that even though Bakhmut is one of the bloodiest battles of the war, any capture of the salt-mining city by Russia would offer Moscow little additional strategic advantage in Donbas.