Russia’s Putin arrives in ICC member Mongolia

ULAANBAATAR, Mongolia: Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Mongolia on Monday (Sep 2), his first visit to a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC) since the court issued an arrest warrant for him last year.
Russian state television showed Putin’s plane landing in the Mongolian capital Ulaanbaatar.
The Russian leader is wanted by the Hague-based court for the alleged illegal deportation of Ukrainian children.
Kyiv has urged Mongolian authorities to execute the arrest warrant, while the ICC said last week that all members had an “obligation” to detain those sought by the court.
In practice, there is little that can be done if Ulaanbaatar does not comply, and the Kremlin said last week it was not concerned that Putin would be arrested while he was in Mongolia.
Mongolia lies on the route of a planned new gas pipeline connecting Russia and China to carry 50 billion cubic metres (bcm) of natural gas a year from the Yamal region to China via Mongolia.
The project, Power of Siberia 2, is part of Russia’s strategy to compensate for the loss of most of its gas sales in Europe since the start of the Ukraine war.
It is the planned successor to an existing pipeline of the same name which already supplies Russian gas to China and is due to reach its planned capacity of 38 bcm per year in 2025.
Putin’s trip to Mongolia comes despite Mongolia being a member of the ICC, which issued an arrest warrant for him in March 2023.
The court said it had “reasonable grounds to believe” that he “bears responsibility for the war crime of unlawful deportation” of Ukrainian children – living in areas of the country that Russian forces took control of – to Russia.
Kyiv says thousands of Ukrainian children were forcibly deported from orphanages and other state institutions after Russian forces took control of swathes of the country in its 2022 invasion.
Russia says it moved some children for their protection and has dismissed the warrant as having no consequence.
After the Russian president touched down Monday evening, Amnesty International warned that a failure to arrest him could further embolden the ex-KGB spy, in power for almost a quarter of a century.
“President Putin is a fugitive from justice,” Altantuya Batdorj, executive director of Amnesty International Mongolia said in a statement.
“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.”