Putin shrugs off ICC war crimes warrant on visit to Mongolia

Vladimir Putin has started an official visit to Mongolia undisturbed, as Ulaanbaatar ignored an arrest warrant for the Russian president.

An honour guard welcomed Putin in the Mongolian capital on Tuesday as he arrived to meet the country’s leader Ukhnaa Khurelsukh. Mongolia has blanked calls for it to arrest the Russian leader on the international warrant.

Mongolia is a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC) that issued an arrest warrant for Putin last year over alleged war crimes in Ukraine, including the deportation of children to Russia.

However, Putin received a warm welcome. The capital’s central Genghis Khan Square was decked out with huge Mongolian and Russian flags for his first visit to the neighbouring country in five years.

A small protest had gathered the previous day as the Russian president arrived in the country. A handful of demonstrators held signs demanding: “Get War Criminal Putin out of here”.

Ukraine has called on Mongolia to arrest Putin and hand him over to the ICC court in The Hague for the alleged illegal deportation of Ukrainian children – a practice that has been widely reported since Moscow launched its invasion of its neighbour in February 2022.

However, action always looked unlikely. Mongolia has refrained from condemning Russia’s offensive and has abstained during votes on the conflict at the United Nations.

“President Putin is a fugitive from justice,” Altantuya Batdorj, executive director of Amnesty International Mongolia, said in a statement on Monday.

“Any trip to an ICC member state that does not end in arrest will encourage President Putin’s current course of action and must be seen as part of a strategic effort to undermine the ICC’s work.”

Members of the international court are bound to detain suspects if an arrest warrant has been issued, but the court does not have any enforcement mechanism.

A spokesperson for Putin said last week that the Kremlin was not worried that the president could be detained during the visit.

Trilateral summit

Mongolia, a sparsely populated country between Russia and China, is heavily dependent on the former for fuel and electricity and on the latter for investment in its mining industry.

It was under Moscow’s sway during the Soviet era. Since the Soviet collapse in 1991, it has sought to keep friendly relations with both the Kremlin and Beijing.

Putin and Khurelsukh on Tuesday are to attend a ceremony marking the 1939 victory of Soviet and Mongolian troops over the Japanese army that had taken control of Manchuria in northeastern China.

Before the trip, Putin pointed to a number of “promising economic and industrial projects” between the two countries in an interview with Mongolian newspaper Unuudur, shared by the Kremlin.

Among those was the construction of the Trans-Mongolian gas pipeline linking China and Russia, he said.

The Russian president also said he was “interested in pursuing substantive work” towards a trilateral summit between himself, Mongolian and Chinese leaders.