Russian President Vladimir Putin has defied the arrest warrant stand out last year from the International Criminal Court in The Hague, making an official visit to Mongolia (one of the 124 States Parties to the ICC), where he was welcomed with full honours.
Putin arrived yesterday evening in the Mongolian capital, where he was greeted at the airport by an honor guard, who paid homage to him instead of arresting him once he got off the plane as required by the Rome Statute ratified by Ulan Bator in 2002.
In March 2023, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for the Russian president, accused of illegally deporting Ukrainian children to Russia. Kiev reacted angrily to the images broadcast on Russian TV: Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Georgii Tykhiï accused Mongolia of “allowing a criminal to escape justice, thus sharing responsibility for his war crimes.”
Last week, the Court in The Hague reminded all member states of their “obligation” to arrest people subject to an arrest warrant. However, under the Rome Statute, judges cannot force signatory countries to fulfill their obligations, except by referring those responsible to the Assembly of States Parties to the Court, whose sanctions are essentially limited to a reprimand, as already happened in the past in the case of the former Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir, who often visited some member nations of the international judicial body undisturbed.
Mongolia, on the other hand, has never condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine and has abstained from all votes on the issue at all United Nations forums. Last week, the Kremlin assured that it had “no concerns” about a possible arrest of Vladimir Putin in Ulaanbaatar, where Genghis Khan Square (better known as Sukhbaatar) was festively decorated with huge flags of the two countries to celebrate the return of the Russian head of state five years after his last official visit to the neighboring nation.
Today, on the occasion of the 85th anniversary of the victory of the Soviet forces in Mongolia over Japan in the 1939 war (which preceded the outbreak of the Second World War by several weeks), Putin was received by President Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh, with whom he discussed a number of “promising economic and industrial projects”. Among them, according to revealed from the local newspaper Unuudurthere is also a gas pipeline that will connect China to Russia. According to the Russian news agency TaxPutin also has invited his Mongolian counterpart to attend the BRICS+ summit, which will be held next month in Kazan.
The Russian president’s visit has also been met with some discontent, with some demonstrators marching through the capital yesterday with a banner calling for the expulsion of “the war criminal Putin.” Another demonstration is scheduled for today at the “Monument to the Victims of Political Repression” in Ulan Bator, which pays homage to those who suffered at the hands of the Soviet regime.
Moscow, like Kiev, does not recognize the International Criminal Court and has always rejected the charges brought against the Russian president.
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