Fanfare and red carpet: Vladimir Putin was greeted with great fanfare in Mongolia on Tuesday, on his first visit to a member country of the International Criminal Court (ICC) since an arrest warrant was issued for him on suspicion of illegally deporting Ukrainian children to Russia.
Mongolia, a member of the ICC, was therefore asked to arrest him. But on Monday evening, upon his arrival in Ulaanbaatar, the Russian president was greeted with great fanfare by the honour guard.
Ukraine reacted angrily: Foreign Ministry spokesman Heorhii Tykhyi accused Mongolia of “allowed the accused criminal to escape justice, thereby sharing responsibility for his war crimes”.
His trip appears to be an act of defiance against the ICC, Ukraine at war, as well as numerous Western countries and human rights organisations that had called for his arrest.
The Court based in The Hague, Netherlands, recalled last week that its member countries have the” obligation “ arresting persons who are the subject of an arrest warrant. But in reality, the possible sanctions of the ICC are essentially limited to a verbal warning.
Mongolia, a democracy sandwiched between the two authoritarian countries of Russia and China, has maintained close ties with Moscow since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. A former satellite country of the USSR, it has not condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and abstained from taking part in votes on this conflict at the UN.
The Kremlin assured last week that there was no “no problem” on the possible arrest of the Russian president in Mongolia.
Before the trip, the Russian leader had praised the “promising economic and industrial projects” between the two countries, in an interview with the Mongolian newspaper UnuudurAmong these projects: the construction of a gas pipeline that will cross Mongolia to connect China and Russia.
