The Kremlin has reported this Tuesday that Vladimir Putin has traveled for the second time in a month to the territories occupied by Russia in Ukraine.
The Russian president's office has released several videos of Putin visiting his troop headquarters in the southern Ukraine's Kherson province and eastern Ukraine's Lugansk.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov has stated that the visit took place on Monday.
Putin appears in the footage congratulating the officers who met with him on Easter.
Orthodox Easter ended on Sunday.
The Russian autocrat presented top brass with a copy of a religious icon that he is heard explaining belonged to "one of the most successful defense ministers in the Russian Empire."
His words show, once again, the imperialist will to invade Ukraine.
The official images provided by the Russian presidency have been filmed to convey key messages.
One of them is a transfer by car of Putin's entourage in which the access sign to Genichesk, a coastal municipality in the province of Kherson, is identified.
Putin had previously landed by helicopter in a field, at an undetermined location.
The video continues with the arrival of the president at a barracks and his reception with high command in a large room occupied by a wall full of screens, supposedly monitoring the front.
In this room, Putin addresses a group of officers along with two colonel generals, Oleg Makarevich, commander of the troops in the southern sector of the invasion, and Mikhail Teplinski, commander of the Russian Airborne Forces.
Teplinski's men are,
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Last hour of the war in Ukraine
The recording released this Tuesday by the Kremlin does not allow Putin to be located on Ukrainian territory at first glance, as did the videos published last month on his first trip to occupied territory in eastern Ukraine.
The Russian president appears in the sequences away from location elements.
However, the forensic analysis of the images, through geolocation tools, helps to verify the trip of the president to Kherson.
After landing in the area, apparently in a military helicopter, Putin's convoy heads in various vehicles to his first appointment with military commanders.
Through the buildings of the complex through which the Russian president moves and, above all, the two water towers that appear at various times in the recording, the entourage can be located about 22 kilometers south of the town of Genichesk, along the coast of the Azov Sea.
This municipality is located 140 kilometers from the nearest Ukrainian positions.
According to the information enabled in some mapping systems, the complex that the Russian president visited this Monday, now used by his troops, is the Primorsky children's camp ―it is not the first recreational place occupied by Russian soldiers in Ukrainian territory―, located a handful of meters from the beaches of the southeastern shore of Kherson.
From the analysis of the recording, it is concluded that Putin arrived at the scene early on Monday morning.
Travel to Lugansk
Putin later traveled by helicopter, according to the official version, to the headquarters of the National Guard in the province of Lugansk, in eastern Ukraine.
While Russia occupies almost all of this province, in Kherson it has only conquered half, which is located on the eastern bank of the Dnieper River.
Both territories were illegally annexed by Russia in September.
The video offered by the Kremlin does not show Putin inside the aircraft or the cars that transport him.
Instead, the cameraman films from the helicopter the coast of Kherson and an airfield from which fighter jets operate.
Colonel General Alexandr Lapin received Putin in Lugansk, according to images provided by the Kremlin.
Lapin was appointed commander of the Russian Land Army in January, despite rumors of his dismissal and criticism of the scant Russian advance in the Donbas region.
From Putin's journey, the Russian war analyst Sasha Kots has highlighted, precisely, the leading role of Lapin.
Although the exact location of the visits has not been made public, the fact that he was able to be in Lugansk and Kherson province would make this move the closest approximation of the Russian president to the front line.
Putin's previous visit to Ukraine took place in mid-March, when he was in the Crimean peninsula (illegally annexed in 2014) and made a brief tour of Mariupol, in the Donetsk province, one of the Ukrainian cities hardest hit by the Russian invasion.
During a courtyard meeting with neighbors in Mariupol, a video was widely released in which a woman was heard shouting from a window that the meeting with Putin was a set-up.
That first trip came just one day after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant against the Russian president for his alleged responsibility in the forced deportation of Ukrainian minors.
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