Vladimir Putin to visit Mongolia, country required to execute International Criminal Court arrest warrant

This is the first visit by the Russian president to a state that is a signatory to the Rome Statute.

He had been careful for almost a year and a half to avoid traveling abroad. Russian President Vladimir Putin, the subject of an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC) for “illegal deportation” of Ukrainian children, will travel to Mongolia on Tuesday, the Kremlin announced on Thursday, August 29. However, this state is a member of the ICC and is therefore supposed to be obliged to arrest him once on its territory.

This is the Russian president’s first trip to a state that is a signatory to the Rome Statute since the ICC issued an arrest warrant for him in March 2023. For example, he had skipped the BRICS summit (geopolitical group bringing together nine emerging countries) in August 2023 in South Africa, a member country of the ICC.

Russian Head of State Visits Mongolia “at the invitation of Mongolian President Ukhnaa Khurelsukh”according to the Kremlin, “to participate in the celebrations of the 85th anniversary of the joint victory of the Soviet and Mongolian armed forces over the Japanese militarists” during the Battle of Khalkhin Gol. The two leaders planned talks and “will discuss prospects for the development of Russian-Mongolian relations”according to the same source.

The Kremlin has always firmly rejected the ICC’s accusations against the Russian president. According to the court, there are “reasonable grounds to believe that Vladimir Putin is personally responsible” crimes of “illegal deportation of population (children) and illegal transfer of population (children) from the occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.”

As Matthew Waxman, a professor at Columbia Law School, explained to AFP, “The chances are slim that Vladimir Putin will ever be arrested”. Since the ICC does not have its own police force, this arrest depends on the goodwill of member states. The execution of the warrants “depends on international cooperation”, confirmed the president of the ICC, Piotr Hofmanski.