Russian leader Vladimir Putin is set to meet with Mongolia’s president and other senior officials despite calls for his arrest under an International Criminal Court warrant related to alleged war crimes.
Putin will meet President Khurelsukh Ukhana on Tuesday after arriving in the nation sandwiched between Russia and China on Monday night. The two will discuss “issues of relations and cooperation,” the Mongolian government said without elaborating.
This is Putin’s first visit to an ICC member country since warrants were issued last year over the abduction of children from occupied territories in Ukraine. As a signatory to the Rome Statute governing the court, Mongolia is obliged to execute warrants and arrest Putin if he appears on its territory.
Putin has not previously risked similar travel. He skipped the BRICS leaders’ summit in South Africa last year after the host made it clear he would have to comply with the ICC warrant as a member state.
Putin received assurances before his trip to Mongolia that he would not be arrested, Bloomberg News previously reported, citing two people familiar with Kremlin preparations for his trip.
Ukraine’s foreign ministry said in a statement that Mongolia should “implement a binding international arrest warrant and transfer Putin to the International Criminal Court in The Hague.”
An ICC spokesperson previously said that “parties to the ICC Rome Statute have an obligation to cooperate with the court’s decisions “including in relation to extradition warrants”. In cases of non-cooperation, an ICC judge can report the court’s monitoring and legislative body, which “takes any action it deems appropriate”. can.”
Putin’s visit comes just six months after the first Mongolian judge to serve on the ICC took office. Khurelsukh praised the development at the time.
A spokesman for the US Embassy in Ulaanbaatar previously said that Putin should not be given a platform to promote aggression against Ukraine.
Neither Russia nor the US is a member of the ICC, which has 124 member states.
Russia aims to build Power of Siberia 2, a new gas pipeline from Mongolia to China. Russia may supply gas to Mongolia as part of the effort, Putin said in an interview with Mongolia’s Unudur newspaper.
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