President Putin made a trip to two annexed regions of Ukraine Monday.

The Kremlin said Putin on Monday had attended a military command meeting in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region and visited a national guard headquarters in eastern Luhansk.

Putin heard reports from commanders of the airborne forces and the Dnieper army group as well as other senior officers who briefed him on the situation in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions in the south.

Neither Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu nor Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov joined Putin on his trip as a security precaution, the Kremlin said.

The Independent has more:

Dressed in a heavy blue jacket, Mr Putin was shown on Russian state television descending from a military helicopter in south Kherson and greeting senior military commanders.

“It is important for me to hear your opinion on how the situation is developing, to listen to you, to exchange information,” Mr Putin told the commanders.

Here’s video of the visit:

Russian media 🇷🇺 is saying that Putin visited occupied-Ukraine 🇺🇦 today.

“He” needs to show-up and show his “leadership” and “concern” for his soldiers every once-in-a-while. But I bet open source analysis will figure out the location of where the videos were made. pic.twitter.com/eJSXH8QV1y

— Jason Jay Smart (@officejjsmart) April 18, 2023

Putin hasn’t made many trips to Ukraine since the start of the war but he did visit Crimea last month. Russia was clearly hoping to see some territory gains at the end of winter but it really hasn’t worked out that way. They have made some slow progress in Bakhmut and, probably not coincidentally, the pace of artillery attacks on that town increased.

“The Bakhmut sector remains the epicenter of the fighting,” General Syrsky said on the Telegram messaging app, referring to broader fighting in the east of the country.

“This is where the enemy is concentrating most of its efforts and is determined to take control of the city at any cost,” he said. “Currently, the enemy is increasing the activity of heavy artillery and the number of airstrikes, turning the city into ruins.”

He also said that Moscow was attacking Bakhmut from several directions simultaneously.

The UK Ministry of defense released a new assessment yesterday suggesting that Russia might be diverting soldiers from other fronts in order to make a push on Bakhmut.

(2/4) In Bakhmut, Russian MoD and Wagner Group forces continue to make creeping advances. The front line in the town centre largely follows the main railway line.

— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) April 18, 2023

So it continues to look as if Ukraine is fighting for smaller and smaller pieces of the city while the all out effort by Russia is creating small gains. Bakhmut is mostly rubble at this point with, at most, a few thousand civilians still living there. Ukraine has said in the past it was staying there because it was significantly depleting the Wagner forces who were making human wave attacks against their positions. The question is at what point it’s not worth risking the loss of more Ukrainian fighters to hold onto the rubble. There’s still no sign Ukraine is planning to withdraw but the trend seems to be heading that way.

There was some speculation a few weeks ago that maybe Ukraine was holding out for the new western tanks and armor which was just arriving. But if there’s a Ukrainian counterattack coming, we haven’t seen signs of it yet.

Update: In case it wasn’t clear that Russia is portraying this as a holy war. Here’s what Putin delivered during his visit yesterday.

Putin visited occupied Ukraine and gave his troops there an icon once owned by "one of the Russian Empire's most successful defense ministers," reinforcing the narrative Russia is fighting an imperialist holy war pic.twitter.com/HHaYmluwvY

— max seddon (@maxseddon) April 18, 2023