INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has visited the war-battered city of Mariupol in southern Ukraine, his ministry announced Monday, one
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..
Defense Ministry to restore infrastructure in Donbas," the ministry said, without specifying the timing of the visit.He visited a medical
center built by the military, a dispatch center of the emergency situations ministry as well as a newly constructed district with a dozen
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 Defense 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 grueling effort to capture Bakhmut has been spearheaded on the ground by the Russian mercenary group Wagner.Its founder,
Kremlin ally Yevgeny Prigozhin, routinely criticizes the Defense Ministry in social media videos allegedly filmed from the front.Analysts
little additional strategic advantage in Donbas.
