Putin is heading to Mongolia, which should arrest him when he lands

It’s seen as a strategic visit for the longtime allies, but there’s one small problem: In March 2023, the International Criminal Court, or ICC, issued an arrest warrant for Putin on charges of deportation and illegal transfer of children during the course of action. war in Ukraine.

As a signatory to the Rome Statute – the founding treaty of the ICC – Mongolia is obliged to detain people on their territory if they have an arrest warrant in their name. (Russia also signed the Rome Statute in 2000, but withdrew its signature in 2016 and never became a member of the ICC.)

This is Putin’s first visit to an ICC member country since the mandate was issued.

So what will Mongolia do?

“Mongolia will never arrest him, of course,” said Talita Dias, a researcher at the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict.

Dias said that while Mongolia is bound to arrest Putin, there are likely to be no major consequences if it does not.

Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters that Moscow had “no worries” about the upcoming trip. “We have a wonderful dialogue with our friends in Mongolia,” he said.

As a judicial institution, the ICC does not have its own police force or enforcement body. “It’s very difficult to operate in this space of states without enforcement,” Dias said.

In a similar case, South Africa was censured by the ICC for failing to arrest Sudan’s then-president Omar al-Bashir in 2015.

Dias told BI that in that case, since Sudan was a non-member state, the UN Security Council got involved, which escalated the situation.

In Putin’s case, it is also the first time the court has issued a warrant against the leader of one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.

Dias said that since Russia is a permanent member of the Security Council, there are unlikely to be far-reaching consequences for either country if the mandate is not followed.

“There will be legal proceedings, probably at the ICC,” she said, adding: “It would be a finding that Mongolia has violated the Rome Statute. Maybe some countries will sanction Mongolia for this, and then that’s it.”

“I’m curious to see what happens,” she told BI.

Hungary and Armenia previously assured Putin that he would not be arrested on their territory, even though he is a member of the ICC.

Russian and Mongolian government representatives did not immediately respond to BI’s request for comment.