Russian President Vladimir Putin was yesterday visiting Mongolia 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 (ICC) 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 EU expressed concern that Mongolia might not execute the warrant. A spokesperson for Putin last week said that the Kremlin was not worried.
The warrant puts the Mongolian government in a tough spot. Member countries are required by the ICC’s founding treaty, the Rome Statute, to detain suspects if an arrest warrant has been issued. However, Mongolia, a landlocked country bordering Russia, is highly dependent on its much larger neighbor for fuel and some of its electricity. The court lacks a mechanism to enforce its warrants.
Photo: Reuters / Sputnik
The Russian leader was welcomed in the main square in the capital, Ulan Bator, 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.
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.
Sitting down for talks with Khurelsukh, Putin said that relations between their two countries “are developing in all areas.”
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 late next month.
Khurelsukh accepted, according to Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.
The ICC has accused Putin of being responsible for the abductions of children from Ukraine, where the fighting has raged for two-and-a-half years.
On Monday, the EU expressed concern that the ICC warrant might not be executed and said it has 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 added that “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 last month in the biggest East-West prisoner swap since the Cold War.
In an online statement, Russian Security Council Deputy Secretary Dmitry Medvedev denounced the warrant against Putin as “illegal” and those who would try to carry it out as “madmen.”
Putin, on his first visit to Mongolia in five years, is to 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.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS