Putin travels to Mongolia, defying international court arrest order

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday made his first visit to a member state of the International Criminal Court since he was indicted on a charge of war crimes last year but faces little threat of arrest in Mongolia.

Signatories to the Rome Statute setting up the court are obligated to detain individuals for whom the court has issued arrest warrants. The court indicted Putin and his human rights commissioner for children, Maria Lvova-Belova, for war crimes in March 2023 after Russia removed thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia.

Putin canceled a visit to an August 2023 BRICS summit in Johannesburg after a South African court affirmed the government’s duty to arrest Putin if he visited.

Mongolia, however, has long lived in Russia’s shadow; the two have close relations, and it clearly has no intent of carrying out the warrant. Putin has friends across the globe willing to overlook the invasion and has made common cause with other autocrats and dictators, such as China’s Xi Jinping, to reshape global bodies seen as overly pro-West.

Neither Russia, China nor the United States is a signatory to the Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court to prosecute those guilty of crimes against humanity when courts with jurisdiction fail to act. But Mongolia is a signatory, and a Mongolian judge serves on the court.

An open letter by the Antiwar Human Rights Coalition, signed by dozens of rights advocates and organizations, including Vladimir Kara-Murza, one of the Russian political prisoners freed last month in a historic prisoner exchange, called on Mongolia’s government to fulfill its obligations and arrest Putin.

“The extent of destruction in Ukraine after 2.5 years of active combat is nearly impossible to calculate,” the letter said. “… All this human suffering is caused by the will of one person-Vladimir Putin. You can end it by upholding the law. If you do, Mongolia will free three countries at once: Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia.” Kara-Murza is a contributing columnist for The Washington Post.

Maria Elena Vignoli, senior international justice counsel at Human Rights Watch, said that welcoming Putin “would not only be an affront to the many victims of Russian forces’ crimes, but would also undermine the crucial principle that no one, no matter how powerful, is above the law.”

According to the Kremlin, Putin was invited by Mongolian President Ukhnaa Khurelsukh to take part in ceremonies marking the 85th anniversary of the victory of Mongolian and Soviet troops over Japanese forces at the Khalkhin Gol river.

Before his arrival in Mongolia, Putin visited a school in Tuva, one of Russia’s poorest republics, bordering Mongolia. He extolled military values on the first day of school, railed against Ukraine, and spoke of the importance of a new compulsory school course, “Basics of Security and Defense of the Motherland,” which he said would put military preparation for children “on a systemic basis.”

“Be in shape and always fight, always be ready to fight,” he told a uniformed female cadet, Alisa Novosyolova.

Spending on patriotic education and state-run militarized organizations for children and teens has already grown to more than $500 million in 2024, from about $34 million in 2021, according to federal budget statistics reported by RBC, a Russian business daily.

Putin also celebrated the course of the war in Ukraine, where Russian forces have been making new advances in the eastern Donbas region, while dismissing the Ukrainian incursion into Russia’s Kursk province as just a “provocation.”

“The main goal that the enemy set itself, to stop our offensive in Donbas, hasn’t been achieved. Moreover, we’re now talking not about advancing 200 or 300 meters. We haven’t had such pace of our offensive in Donbas for a long time,” he said, describing the territorial gains as now by the “square kilometer.”