He made a stop at the legendary Artek holiday camp for young people, dating from Soviet times, on the shores of the Black Sea, the Kremlin said in a statement.
Founded in 1925 based on an idea from Lenin, the father of Russian communism, Artek went from a sanitorium for children with tuberculosis to a camp for “pioneers”, the communist youth organisation for children aged 10 to 14.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Artek, like all of Crimea, was part of an independent Ukraine and the facility fell on hard times.
But after the Russians took back the peninsula the youth camp was renovated.
“It wasn’t that long ago that Artek went through rather difficult times. But now it is being reborn, and it is reborn as an international holiday camp,” Putin said in a speech to the young people.
Putin has visited Crimea before since Russia’s annexation, which was condemned by the international community, and Kiev considers it to still be part of Ukraine.
The country’s foreign ministry issued a statement saying that Kiev “considers this visit ... to be a gross violation of the sovereignty of the State and the territorial integrity of Ukraine”, according to the Russian Tass news agency.
Ukraine has been fighting a pro-Russian insurgency in the east of the country since 2014 which Kiev and its Western allies say is backed by Moscow.
More than 10,000 people, civilians and fighters, have been killed since the conflict started.
Yesterday two Ukrainian soldiers were killed in the restive east of the country just a few hours after a new ceasefire between pro-Russian rebels and government troops went into force, Ukraine’s army said.
The ceasefire, which started at midnight local time (2100 GMT on Friday), was agreed at a meeting with the separatists and the Contact Group for Ukraine, consisting of representatives from Kiev, Moscow and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).
The halt to the fighting is intended to allow local farmers to harvest their crops and is set to last until August 31.
But “despite the ceasefire accords starting today”, two Ukrainian soldiers were killed and two others wounded, the army said in a message published on Facebook.
It accused the rebels of firing several rounds at Kiev forces in the eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk.
On the other hand, representatives of the self-declared rebel Donetsk republic (DNR) claimed there were around 10 violations of the ceasefire by the Kiev forces, firing on rebel positions with “artillery, mortars and tanks”.
“All the information on these violations (of the ceasefire) ... have been sent to the OSCE,” said DNR representative Edouard Bassourine, according to Russia’s Interfax news agency.
So far, none of the truces declared during the two-year conflict has lasted.
The OSCE, which runs a monitoring mission in the conflict zone, regularly reported violations of the last truce over Easter.
This latest ceasefire announced on Wednesday came as Moscow cancelled a meeting with senior US diplomats after Washington reinforced sanctions imposed over Russia’s interference in Ukraine and occupation of Crimea.
The fighting in the pro-Russian insurgency in eastern Ukraine, which Kiev and its Western allies say is backed by Moscow, has claimed more than 10,000 lives since the start of the conflict.
