Ulan Bator welcomes Russian leader, ignoring order to illegally deport Ukrainian children
Vladimir Putin has begun an official visit to Mongolia without a hitch, as Ulaanbaatar ignored an arrest warrant against the Russian president.
An honour guard greeted Putin in Mongolia's capital on Tuesday as he arrived to meet the country's leader, Ukhnaa Khurelsukh. Mongolia has ignored calls for the Russian leader's arrest under an international arrest warrant.
Mongolia is a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which last year issued an arrest warrant for Putin over alleged war crimes in Ukraine, including the deportation of children to Russia.
Putin, however, received a warm welcome. The central Genghis Khan Square in the capital was decked out with huge Mongolian and Russian flags on his first visit to the neighbouring country in five years.
The day before, when the Russian president arrived in the country, a small protest had taken place. A handful of demonstrators held signs demanding: “Get war criminal Putin out of here.”
Ukraine has called on Mongolia to arrest Putin and hand him over to the ICC court in The Hague over the alleged illegal deportation of Ukrainian children, a practice that has been widely denounced since Moscow launched its invasion of its neighbour in February 2022.
However, action has always seemed unlikely. Mongolia has refrained from condemning the Russian offensive and has abstained from voting 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 result in an arrest will encourage President Putin’s current course of action and must be seen as part of a strategic effort to undermine the work of the ICC.”
Members of the international tribunal are obliged to arrest suspects if an arrest warrant has been issued, but the tribunal has no enforcement mechanism.
A Putin spokesman said last week that the Kremlin was not concerned that the president could be detained during his visit.
Trilateral summit
Mongolia, a sparsely populated country sandwiched between Russia and China, relies heavily on the former for fuel and electricity and the latter for investment in its mining industry.
During the Soviet era it was under Moscow's rule, and since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 it has sought to maintain friendly relations with both the Kremlin and Beijing.
Putin and Khurelsukh will attend a ceremony on Tuesday commemorating the 1939 victory of Soviet and Mongolian troops over the Japanese army that had taken control of Manchuria in northeastern China.
Ahead of the trip, Putin outlined a number of “promising economic and industrial projects” between the two countries in an interview with Mongolian newspaper Unuudur, shared by the Kremlin.
These include the construction of the Trans-Mongolian gas pipeline linking China and Russia, he said.
The Russian president also said he was “interested in doing substantive work” toward a trilateral summit between himself, Mongolian and Chinese leaders.
