Vladimir Putin has begun an official visit to Mongolia, as Ulaanbaatar ignored an arrest warrant for the Russian president.
An honor guard greeted Putin in the Mongolian capital on Tuesday when he arrived to meet the country’s leader, Ukhna Khurelsukh. Mongolia has dismissed calls to arrest the Russian leader on international warrants.
Mongolia is a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC) which has issued Arrest warrant Alleged war crimes in Ukraine last year for Putin, including the deportation of children to Russia.
However, Putin was warmly received. The capital’s central Genghis Khan Square was decorated with huge Mongolian and Russian flags for his first visit to the neighboring country in five years.
Earlier in the day, a small protest had gathered 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 neighbor in February 2022.
However, action always looked unlikely. Mongolia has refrained from condemning Russia’s aggression and abstained during a vote on the conflict at the United Nations.
“President Putin is a fugitive from justice,” Altantuya Batdorge, Amnesty International Mongolia’s executive director, said in a statement on Monday.
“Any trip to an ICC member state that does not end in an arrest would encourage President Putin’s current actions and should be viewed as part of a strategic effort to undermine the work of the ICC.”
Members of the International Court of Justice are obliged to detain suspects if an arrest warrant is issued, but the Court has no enforcement mechanism.
Putin’s spokesman said last week that the Kremlin was not concerned 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 for investment in its mining industry and on the latter.
During the Soviet era it was under the dominion of Moscow. Since the Soviet collapse in 1991, it has sought friendly relations with both the Kremlin and Beijing.
Putin and Khurelsukh are due to attend a ceremony in northeastern China on Tuesday to mark the 1939 victory of Soviet and Mongolian troops over the Japanese army that occupied Manchuria.
Ahead of the trip, Putin pointed to a number of “promising economic and industrial projects” between the two countries in an interview with Mongolian newspaper Unudur shared by the Kremlin.
Among them was the construction of the Trans-Mongolian gas pipeline connecting China and Russia, he said.
The Russian president also said he was “interested in pursuing groundwork” towards a trilateral summit between himself, Mongolian and Chinese leaders.
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