Putin defies his arrest warrant with a visit to Mongolia
The trip is Putin's first to a member country of the International Criminal Court since it issued the warrant about 18 months ago.
AP
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The warrant puts the Mongolian government in a difficult position.PHOTO:AP/PTI
Ulaanbaatar, 3 Sept
Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Mongolia on Tuesday
with no sign that the host country would bow to calls to arrest him on an
international warrant for alleged war crimes stemming from the Russian invasion
of Ukraine.
The trip is Putin's first to a member country of the
International Criminal Court since it issued the warrant about 18 months ago.
Ahead of his visit, Ukraine called on Mongolia to hand Putin over to the court
in The Hague, and the European Union expressed concern that Mongolia might not
execute the warrant.
A spokesperson for Putin said last week that the Kremlin
wasn't worried.
The warrant puts the Mongolian government in a difficult
position. After decades under communism with close ties to the Soviet Union, it
transitioned to democracy in the 1990s and has built relations with the United
States, Japan and other new partners.
But it remains economically dependent on its two much larger
and more powerful neighbours, Russia and China. Russia supplies the landlocked
country with most of its fuel and a sizeable amount of its electricity.
The ICC has accused Putin of being responsible for the
abductions of children from Ukraine, where the fighting has raged for 2½ years.
Member countries are required by the court's founding treaty, the Rome Statute,
to detain suspects if an arrest warrant has been issued, but Mongolia needs to
maintain good relations with Russia and the court lacks a mechanism to enforce
its warrants.
The Russian leader was welcomed in the main square in
Ulaanbaatar, the capital, by an honour guard dressed in vivid red and blue
uniforms styled on those of the personal guard of 13th century ruler Genghis
Khan, the founder of the Mongol Empire.
He and Mongolian President Khurelsukh Ukhnaa walked up the
red-carpeted steps of the Government Palace and bowed before a statue of
Genghis Khan before entering the building for their meetings.
A small group of protesters who tried to unfurl a Ukrainian
flag before the welcome ceremony were taken away by police.
The two governments signed agreements for a feasibility
study and the design of an upgrade to a power plant in Ulaanbaatar and to
ensure the continuous supply of aviation fuel to Mongolia. Putin also outlined
plans to develop the rail system between the two countries.
He invited the Mongolian president to attend a summit of the
BRICS nations — a group that includes Russia and China among others — in the
Russian city of Kazan in late October. Khurelsukh accepted, according to
Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.
On Monday, the EU expressed concern that the ICC warrant
might not be executed and said it had shared its concern with Mongolian
authorities.
“Mongolia, like all other countries, has the right to
develop its international ties according to its own interests,” European
Commission spokeswoman Nabila Massrali said. But she added, “Mongolia is a
state party to the Rome Statute of the ICC since 2002, with the legal
obligations that it entails.”
More than 50 Russians outside the country have signed an
open letter urging the government of Mongolia to “immediately detain Vladimir
Putin upon his arrival”.
The signers include Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was freed from
a Russian prison in August in the biggest East-West prisoner swap since the
Cold War.
Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy secretary of Russia's Security
Council, denounced the warrant against Putin as “illegal” in an online
statement Tuesday and those who would try to carry it out as “madmen”.
Putin, on his first visit to Mongolia in five years, will
join a ceremony to mark the 85th anniversary of a joint Soviet and Mongolian
victory over Japan's army that controlled Manchuria in northeast China.
Thousands of soldiers on both sides died in 1939 in months of fighting over the
border's location between Manchuria and Mongolia.
“I am very delighted about Putin's visit to Mongolia,"
said Yansanjav Demdendorj, a retired economist, citing Russia's role against
Japan. “If we think of the ... battle, it's Russians who helped free Mongolia.”
Putin has made a series of overseas trips in recent months
to try to counter the international isolation he faces over the invasion of
Ukraine. He visited China in May, made a trip to North Korea and Vietnam in
June and went to Kazhakstan in July for a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization.
But Kenneth Roth, the former longtime director of Human
Rights Watch, described Putin's trip to Mongolia as “a sign of weakness”,
posting on X that the Russian leader “could manage a trip only to a country
with a tiny population of 3.4 million that lives in Russia's shadow”.
Last year, Putin joined a meeting in Johannesburg by video
link after the South African government lobbied against him showing up for the
BRICS summit. South Africa, an ICC member, was condemned by activists and its
main opposition party in 2015 when it didn't arrest then-Sudanese President
Omar al-Bashir during a visit.
Enkhgerel Seded, who studies at a university in Moscow, said
that historically, countries with friendly relations don't arrest
heads-of-state on official visits.
“Our country has obligations toward the international
community," she said. "But ... I think in this case as well, it would
not be appropriate to conduct an arrest.”-AP
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