Mongolia ignores an international arrest warrant against Putin and prepares a red carpet reception for him

ULAANBAATAR – Russian President Vladimir Putin received a red carpet welcome in Mongolia on Tuesday as the country ignored calls to detain him on an international warrant for alleged war crimes related to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

The trip, which ended Tuesday evening, was Putin’s first to a member country of the International Criminal Court since it issued the arrest warrant in March 2023. Ahead of his visit, Ukraine called on Mongolia to extradite Putin to the court in The Hague, and the European Union expressed concern that Mongolia might not execute the arrest warrant.

The arrest warrant put the Mongolian government in a difficult position. After decades of communism and close ties with the Soviet Union, the country 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 accuses Putin of being responsible for the abductions of children from Ukraine. Member countries are required to arrest suspects when an arrest warrant is issued, but Mongolia must maintain its relations with Russia and the court lacks a mechanism to enforce its arrest warrants.

The Russian president was greeted in the main square of the capital Ulan Bator by an honour guard in bright red and blue uniforms in the style of the 13th-century personal guard of Genghis Khan, the founder of the Mongol Empire.

A crowd watched from behind makeshift barriers as Putin and Mongolian President Churelsuch Uchnaa walked up the red-carpeted steps of the government palace and bowed to a statue of Genghis Khan before entering the building for their meeting.

A small group of protesters who wanted to unfurl a Ukrainian flag before the ceremony were escorted away by police. Five others who had gathered a few blocks west of the square held an anti-Putin banner and a Ukrainian flag, but dispersed after hearing of the arrests.

While Putin was being received in Mongolia, his troops attacked a military training facility and a nearby hospital in Poltava, Ukraine, killing at least 50 people and wounding more than 200 others, the country’s president said. The attack was apparently one of the deadliest by Russian forces since the war began on February 24, 2022.

Mongolia and Russia signed agreements to plan and conduct a feasibility study of a power plant upgrade in Ulaanbaatar and to ensure supplies of Russian jet fuel to Mongolia. Another agreement was for an environmental study of a river on which Mongolia plans to build a hydroelectric power plant, as Russia fears it could pollute Lake Baikal on the Russian side. Putin also outlined plans to expand the rail network between the countries.

He invited the Mongolian president to attend a summit of the BRICS countries – a group that includes Russia and China – in the Russian city of Kazan at the end of October. According to the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti, Khurelsukh accepted the invitation.

The visit ended on Tuesday evening with an honor guard lining Putin’s path to his plane.

On Monday, the EU informed the Mongolian authorities that it had communicated its concerns that the ICC arrest warrant might not be executed.

“Mongolia, like all other countries, has the right to develop its international relations in accordance with its own interests,” said Nabila Massrali, spokeswoman for the European Commission. She added, however, that Mongolia has been a party to the ICC since 2002, “with the legal obligations that this entails.”

Given Mongolia’s dependence on Russia and China for trade, energy and security, Mongolia could hardly be expected to arrest Putin, says Sam Greene, director of democratic resilience at the Center for European Policy Analysis.

“The main reason for this trip will have been to show that Putin can currently travel,” he said.

However, Greene continued, the arrest warrant narrows the range of options for Putin. It forces “all governments considering accepting Putin to consider the domestic and international consequences of such a decision in a way that they would not have had to before.”

Kenneth Roth, the longtime former director of Human Rights Watch, called Putin’s trip to Mongolia a “sign of weakness” and wrote on X that the Russian president “could only manage one trip to a country with a tiny population of 3.4 million people living in Russia’s shadow.”

But Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stressed that the trip was not about “showing something to Western countries,” but rather about developing bilateral relations between two countries that are rooted in history and “wonderful, glorious traditions.” He addressed his remarks to state television reporter Pavel Zarubin, who published them on his Telegram channel.

More than 50 Russians abroad have signed an open letter calling on the Mongolian government to “arrest Vladimir Putin immediately upon his arrival.” Among them is Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was released from a Russian prison in August in the largest East-West prisoner exchange since the Cold War.

Dmitry Medvedev, deputy secretary of Russia’s Security Council, condemned the arrest warrant as “illegal” in an online statement on Tuesday and called those who would try to execute it “madmen.”

Putin, on his first visit to Mongolia in five years, attended a ceremony marking the 85th anniversary of the Soviet Union and Mongolia’s joint victory over the Japanese army when it controlled Manchuria in northeast China. Thousands of soldiers from both sides died in months of fighting over the border between Manchuria and Mongolia in 1939.

“I am very happy about Putin’s visit to Mongolia,” said Yansanjav Demdendorj, a retired economist, referring to Russia’s role in the fight against Japan. “When we think of the … battle, it was the Russians who contributed to the liberation of Mongolia.”

Uyanga Tsoggerel, who supports the protests, said her country is a democracy that does not tolerate dictatorship and accused Putin of “ruthlessly humiliating and shaming Mongolia in front of the whole world”.

Putin has made a series of foreign trips in recent months to counter the international isolation he faces over the invasion of Ukraine. In May he visited China, in June he traveled to North Korea and Vietnam, and in July he visited Kazakhstan for a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

But last year, the South African government lobbied Putin to appear in Johannesburg for the BRICS summit, which he eventually attended via video link. South Africa, an ICC member, was condemned by activists and its main opposition party in 2015 when it failed to arrest then-Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir during a visit to an African Union summit.

Enkhgerel Seded, who studies at a university in Moscow, said that countries with friendly relations historically do not arrest heads of state during official visits.

“Our country has obligations to the international community,” she said. “But … I think that in this case too, it would not be appropriate to make an arrest.”