Putin defies ICC arrest warrant with official trip to Mongolia

Russian President Vladimir Putin is set to once again expose the weaknesses of international justice on Tuesday. The Russian leader is scheduled to make an official trip to Mongolia, his first visit to a signatory country to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) since the court issued an arrest warrant for the leader for war crimes in Ukraine. The Kremlin is calm. “All the details of the president’s visit have been carefully prepared, of course,” said Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov. Putin landed in Ulaanbaatar on Monday evening, where he was greeted by a welcoming cortege.

The court issued an international arrest warrant against the Russian leader in March 2023 for the forced deportation of Ukrainian minors, the same war crime for which it also called for the arrest of Russia’s children’s ombudsman Maria Lvova-Belova. They were the only Russian authorities wanted until two years after the invasion began, in June 2024, when the court also issued separate arrest warrants for former Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov for the bombing of civilians.

Putin has been invited by Mongolian President Ukhnaa Khurelsukh to a military parade to mark the anniversary of the 1939 Battle of Khalkhin Gol, when the USSR halted the expansion of the Japanese Empire on its border. But today’s pressing needs are forcing Putin to risk leaving the Kremlin. China has become Russia’s economic outlet and Moscow is trying to sell Beijing the gas it has stopped trading with the European Union, its main customer until the war, after supplies were cut off due to sanctions.

The Mongolian government is demanding fuel from Moscow at a significant discount. In exchange, Ulaanbaatar would offer its territory for the construction of the Soyuz Vostok gas pipeline between Russia and China. This project, still a draft on paper, is a key part of a much larger project between Moscow and Beijing that is still up in the air due to the lack of interest shown by China: the Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline.

Putin’s official visit became known days after the Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post announced that Mongolia had left this gas pipeline out of its list of projects for the next four years.

“There is no doubt that we will respond to the requests of our Mongolian friends to meet their needs for fuel and lubricants at preferential prices,” Putin told the Mongolian newspaper. Onoodor before embarking on your journey.

The arrest warrant is a headache for the Kremlin. A year ago, Putin decided at the last minute not to attend the BRICS summit in Johannesburg in August 2023 to avoid ending up in jail for this reason. The South African government, a member of the International Criminal Court, did not offer any guarantees to the leader and a court in the country ruled that he should be arrested.

Mongolia’s permissiveness has now outraged Ukraine and international human rights organisations. “With no police force of its own, the International Criminal Court is dependent on states and the international community to assist it with arrests,” Human Rights Watch said.

The NGO has demanded that Mongolia deny entry or arrest the Russian president. Its lawyer specialising in international law, Maria Elena Vignoli, emphasised the damage to universal justice when a leader responsible for a war, in this case Putin, is allowed to roam freely around the world.

“Receiving Putin, a fugitive from the court, is not only an affront to the numerous victims of Russian forces, but also undermines a crucial principle: no one, however powerful, is above the law,” Vignoli said.

Strategic territory

Mongolia is not often in the news, but it is a strategic enclave in Asia. Politically plural – its former president Tsakhiagin Elbegdorzh (2009-2017) publicly encourages Russian Buryat to flee to Mongolia and openly supports Ukraine while recalling that Moscow was once a Mongolian khanate – several heavyweights of Western diplomacy have passed through Ulaanbaatar in recent months.

Among them are US Secretary of State Antony Blinken a few weeks ago; British Foreign Secretary David Cameron; German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier; and French leader Emmanuel Macron in 2023. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was also due to visit the country in August but called off the trip due to the threat of an earthquake.

Mongolia ratified the Rome Statute establishing the International Criminal Court in 2002. The Kremlin, however, never ratified its accession and finally revoked its signature in 2016, as did the United States, China and Israel.

While calling for a “just international order,” Russia has in recent years justified its war crimes in Ukraine by comparing them to those committed by the United States in Iraq or Israel in Gaza. In fact, the ICC Prosecutor’s Office requested another arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in May of this year for war crimes in Gaza. Before Putin, only Presidents Omar al-Bashir of Sudan and the late Muammar Gaddafi of Libya had been wanted.

Mongolian authorities’ condescension to Putin’s visit leaves nothing to be desired the manifesto that 93 States signed in Juneincluding Spain, to urge “preserving the integrity (of the court) against any interference and political pressure.”

The statement called for compliance with international arrest warrants: “We call upon all States to cooperate fully with the Tribunal so that it can fulfil its important mandate: to ensure equal justice for all victims of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes of aggression.”

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