Putin shrugs off war crimes warrant on visit to Mongolia

Vladimir Putin has concluded an official visit to Mongolia undisturbed as Ulaanbaatar ignored an arrest warrant for the Russian president.
An honour guard welcomed Putin in the Mongolian capital on Tuesday as he arrived to meet the country’s leader, Ukhnaa Khurelsukh. Mongolia blanked calls for it to arrest the Russian leader on the international warrant.
Mongolia is a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which issued an arrest warrant for Putin last year over alleged war crimes in Ukraine, including the deportation of children to Russia.
However, Putin received a warm welcome. The capital’s central Genghis Khan Square was decked out with huge Mongolian and Russian flags for his first visit to the neighbouring country in five years.
A small protest was held the day before the Russian president’s arrival. A handful of demonstrators held signs demanding: “Get war criminal Putin out of here.”
Ukraine had called on Mongolia to arrest Putin and hand him over to the ICC 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 neighbour in February 2022.
However, action always looked unlikely. Mongolia has refrained from condemning Russia’s offensive and has abstained during votes on the conflict at the United Nations.
“President Putin is a fugitive from justice,” Altantuya Batdorj, executive director of Amnesty International Mongolia, said in a statement on Monday.
“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.”
Members of the international court are bound to detain suspects if an arrest warrant has been issued, but the court does not have any enforcement mechanism.
A spokesperson for Putin said last week that the Kremlin was not worried that the president could be detained during the visit.
Mongolia, a sparsely populated country between Russia and China, is heavily dependent on the former for fuel and electricity and on the latter for investment in its mining industry.
It was under Moscow’s sway during the Soviet era. Since the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, it has sought to keep friendly relations with both the Kremlin and Beijing.
As Putin was welcomed in Mongolia, his forces struck a military training facility and nearby hospital in Poltava, Ukraine, killing at least 51 people and wounding more than 200, Ukrainian authorities said.
The strike appeared to be one of the deadliest by Russian forces since the full-scale war in Ukraine began on February 24, 2022.
Mongolia and Russia signed agreements to design and study the feasibility of a power plant upgrade in Ulaanbaatar and to ensure the supply of Russian aviation fuel to Mongolia.
Another agreement covered an environmental study of a river where Mongolia wants to build a hydroelectric plant that Russia is concerned would pollute Lake Baikal on the Russian side. Putin also outlined plans to develop the rail system between the countries.
He invited the Mongolian president to attend a summit of the BRICS nations, a group that includes Russia and China, in the Russian city of Kazan in late October. Khurelsukh accepted, according to the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.
The visit ended with an honour guard lining Putin’s walk to his airplane.