ULAANBAATAR, Mongolia — Russian President Vladimir Putin received a red-carpet welcome to Mongolia on Tuesday, as the country ignored calls to arrest him on an international warrant for alleged war crimes stemming from Moscow‘s invasion of Ukraine.
The trip is Putin’s first to a member nation of the International Criminal Court since it issued the warrant in March 2023. Ahead of his visit, Ukraine urged Mongolia to hand Putin over to the court in The Hague, and the European Union expressed concern that Mongolia might not execute the warrant.
The warrant put 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 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 has accused Putin of being responsible for the abductions of children from Ukraine. Member countries are required to detain suspects if a warrant has been issued, but Mongolia needs to maintain its ties 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 honor 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.
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