Mongolia ignores international arrest warrant against Putin and gives him a red carpet welcome – The Diplomat

Russian President Vladimir Putin received a red carpet welcome in Mongolia on Tuesday as the country ignored calls for his arrest on an international warrant for alleged war crimes related to Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

The trip, which ended Tuesday evening, was Putin's first to a member country of the International Criminal Court since it issued the arrest warrant in March 2023. Ahead of his visit, Ukraine called on Mongolia to extradite Putin to the court in The Hague, and the European Union expressed concern that Mongolia might not execute the arrest warrant.

The arrest warrant put the Mongolian government in a difficult position. After decades of communism and close ties with the Soviet Union, the country transitioned to democracy in the 1990s and built relations with the United States, Japan and other new partners. But the landlocked country remains economically dependent on its two much larger and more powerful neighbors, Russia and China.

The ICC accuses Putin of being responsible for the abductions of children from Ukraine. Member countries are required to arrest suspects when an arrest warrant is issued, but Mongolia must maintain its relations with Russia and the court lacks a mechanism to enforce its arrest warrants.

The United States believes that no country “should provide Putin with a platform to advance his war of aggression against Ukraine,” said US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller.

“We understand Mongolia's situation, you know, sandwiched between two much larger neighbors, but we think it's important that they continue to support the rule of law in the world,” he told reporters in Washington.

The Russian president was greeted in the main square of the capital Ulan Bator by an honour guard in bright red and blue uniforms in the style of the 13th-century personal guard of Genghis Khan, the founder of the Mongol Empire.

A crowd watched from behind barriers as Putin and Mongolian President Churelsuch Uchnaa walked up the red-carpeted steps of the government palace and bowed before a statue of Genghis Khan.

Some protesters who attempted to raise a Ukrainian flag were taken away by police. Five others who had gathered a few blocks west of the square held up an anti-Putin banner and a Ukrainian flag, but dispersed after hearing of the arrests.

While Putin was being received in Mongolia, his troops attacked a military training facility and a nearby hospital in Poltava, Ukraine, killing at least 50 people, the country's president said. The attack was apparently one of the deadliest by Russian forces since the war began on February 24, 2022.

The two governments signed agreements to modernize a power plant in Ulaanbaatar and to supply Russian aviation fuel to Mongolia. They also agreed to conduct an environmental study of a river on which Mongolia plans to build a hydroelectric power plant because Russia fears it could pollute Lake Baikal. Putin also outlined plans to expand the rail network between the two countries.

He invited the Mongolian president to a summit of the BRICS countries – which include Russia and China – in the Russian city of Kazan at the end of October. According to Russian state media, Khurelsukh accepted the invitation.

After leaving Ulan Bator, Putin arrived early Wednesday in Vladivostok, Russia's largest Pacific port, where he will attend an economic forum.

On Monday, the EU said it had communicated its concerns to the Mongolian authorities.

“Mongolia, like all other countries, has the right to develop its international relations in accordance with its own interests,” said European Commission spokeswoman Nabila Massrali. She added, however, that Mongolia has been a party to the ICC since 2002, “with the legal obligations that this entails.”

Given Mongolia's dependence on Russia and China for trade, energy and security, the government can hardly be expected to arrest Putin, says Sam Greene, director of democratic resilience at the Center for European Policy Analysis.

“The main reason for this trip will have been to show that Putin can currently travel,” he said.

But, Greene continued, the arrest warrant limits Putin's options and forces “any government considering admission to Putin's country to consider the domestic and international consequences of such a decision in a way that it would not have had to before.”

Kenneth Roth, the longtime former director of Human Rights Watch, called Putin's trip to Mongolia a “sign of weakness” and wrote on X that the Russian president “could only manage one trip to a country with a tiny population of 3.4 million people living in Russia's shadow.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the trip was not about “showing something to Western countries,” but rather about developing bilateral relations between two countries rooted in history and “wonderful, glorious traditions.” He addressed his remarks to state television reporter Pavel Zarubin, who published them on his Telegram channel.

Dmitry Medvedev, deputy secretary of the Russian Security Council, described the arrest warrant as “illegal” in an online statement on Tuesday.

On his first visit to Mongolia in five years, Putin attended a ceremony to commemorate the 85th anniversary of the joint Soviet-Mongolian victory over the Japanese army in deadly fighting on the border between then Japanese-controlled Manchuria and Mongolia.

“I am very happy about Putin's visit to Mongolia,” said Yansanjav Demdendorj, a retired economist, referring to Russia's role in the fight against Japan. “When we think of the … battle, it was the Russians who contributed to the liberation of Mongolia.”

Uyanga Tsoggerel, who supports the protests, said her country is a democracy that does not tolerate dictatorship and accused Putin of “ruthlessly humiliating and shaming Mongolia in front of the whole world”.

Putin has made a series of foreign trips to counter the international isolation he faces over the invasion of Ukraine. In May he visited China, in June he traveled to North Korea and Vietnam, and in July he visited Kazakhstan for a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

But last year, the South African government lobbied Putin to stop him from attending the BRICS summit in Johannesburg, which he eventually attended via video link. South Africa, an ICC member, came under fire in 2015 for failing to arrest then-Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir during a visit to the country for an African Union summit.

Enkhgerel Seded, who studies at a university in Moscow, said that countries with friendly relations historically do not arrest heads of state during official visits.

“Our country has obligations to the international community,” she said. “But … I think that in this case too, it would not be appropriate to make an arrest.”