ICC officially accuses Mongolia of failure to execute Putin arrest warrant

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has found that Mongolia failed to uphold its legal obligations by refusing to arrest and extradite Vladimir Putin when he visited the country in September, it said in a press release on Thursday.

“States Parties and those accepting the Court’s jurisdiction are duty-bound to arrest and surrender individuals subject to ICC warrants, regardless of official position or nationality,” the statement reads.

The ICC has now referred Mongolia to the Assembly of States Parties for violating the Rome Statute, though it is unclear what action the court will take. Tamás Hoffmann, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Legal Studies, told Politico in September that Mongolia would be unlikely to face any “serious consequences, such as sanctions”.

Putin flew to Mongolia on a brief state visit in early September. As a signatory to the Rome Treaty and a member of the ICC, Mongolia had a legal obligation to arrest Putin during his visit due to the pending warrant against him issued by the ICC in March 2023 for Putin’s role in the “unlawful deportation of children” from occupied areas of Ukraine to Russia, which it considers to be a war crime.

The EU, Ukraine, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International had all called for Putin to be arrested during the visit, while Russian anti-war social activists previously signed a petition to the same effect.

While Putin was being given a lavish welcome in the Mongolian capital Ulaanbaatar, a Russian missile strike on the central Ukrainian city of Poltava killed more than 50 people in the deadliest attack in the region since the war began.

Explaining the country’s decision not to act on the ICC warrant, a Mongolian government spokesperson told Politico that the country found itself in a tough spot due to its energy dependence on its immediate neighbours — Russia and China — for 95% of its petroleum products.