Russian President Vladimir Putin was yesterday visiting Mongolia with no sign that the host country would bow to calls to arrest him on an international warrant for alleged war crimes stemming from the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The trip is Putin’s first to a member country of the International Criminal Court (ICC) since it issued the warrant about 18 months ago. Ahead of his visit, Ukraine called on Mongolia to hand Putin over to the court in The Hague, and the EU expressed concern that Mongolia might not execute the warrant. A spokesperson for Putin last week said that the Kremlin was not worried.
The warrant puts the Mongolian government in a tough spot. Member countries are required by the ICC’s founding treaty, the Rome Statute, to detain suspects if an arrest warrant has been issued. However, Mongolia, a landlocked country bordering Russia, is highly dependent on its much larger neighbor for fuel and some of its electricity. The court lacks a mechanism to enforce its warrants.
Photo: Reuters / Sputnik
The Russian leader was welcomed in the main square in the capital, Ulan Bator, by an honor guard dressed in vivid red-and-blue uniforms styled on those of the personal guard of 13th century ruler Genghis Khan, the founder of the Mongol empire.
He and Mongolian President Khurelsukh Ukhnaa walked up the red-carpeted steps of the Government Palace and bowed before a statue of Genghis Khan before entering the building for their meetings.
A small group of protesters who tried to unfurl a Ukrainian flag before the welcome ceremony were taken away by police.
Sitting down for talks with Khurelsukh, Putin said that relations between their two countries “are developing in all areas.”
He invited the Mongolian president to attend a summit of the BRICS nations — a group that includes Russia and China among others — in the Russian city of Kazan late next month.
Khurelsukh accepted, according to Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.
The ICC has accused Putin of being responsible for the abductions of children from Ukraine, where the fighting has raged for two-and-a-half years.
On Monday, the EU expressed concern that the ICC warrant might not be executed and said it has shared its concern with Mongolian authorities.
“Mongolia, like all other countries, has the right to develop its international ties according to its own interests,” European Commission spokeswoman Nabila Massrali said, but added that “Mongolia is a state party to the Rome Statute of the ICC since 2002, with the legal obligations that it entails.”
More than 50 Russians outside the country have signed an open letter urging the government of Mongolia to “immediately detain Vladimir Putin upon his arrival.” The signers include Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was freed from a Russian prison last month in the biggest East-West prisoner swap since the Cold War.
In an online statement, Russian Security Council Deputy Secretary Dmitry Medvedev denounced the warrant against Putin as “illegal” and those who would try to carry it out as “madmen.”
Putin, on his first visit to Mongolia in five years, is to join a ceremony to mark the 85th anniversary of a joint Soviet and Mongolian victory over Japan’s army that controlled Manchuria in northeast China. Thousands of soldiers on both sides died in 1939 in months of fighting over the border’s location between Manchuria and Mongolia.
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