Putin Travels to Mongolia Amid ICC Arrest Warrant

Facts

• Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin arrived in Mongolia for a two-day state visit late on Monday. The trip is Putin's first to a member state of the International Criminal Court (ICC) since it issued a warrant for his arrest eighteen months ago.^[1][2]
• According to the March 2023 arrest warrant, Putin and his country's commissioner for children's rights, Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, were wanted for allegedly being responsible for the deportation and unlawful transfer of children to Russia from occupied areas of eastern Ukraine.^[3]
• Russia maintains the situation is different. In April of last year, Dmitry Polyansky, a Russian diplomat to the UN, said that at least 5M Ukrainians, including 730K children, have moved to Russia since 2014.^[4]
• 'The vast majority of them arrived with their parents or relatives,' Polyansky said. 'Of course, there is some number of orphans, but again these orphans are being taken temporarily in the foster families and it is not adoption, it is guardianship — it's a different situation in the international law.'^[4]
• Nonetheless, amid a widely held belief in Western countries that Putin is guilty of the accused war crimes, Mongolia — as a member state of the ICC — was reminded by the EU and Ukraine of its legal commitment to enforce its arrest warrants and detain Putin on arrival. Instead, he was given the red carpet treatment as he met the Mongolian leader Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh in the capital on Wednesday.^[5][6]
• Announcing the trip prior to Putin's arrival, the Russian newswire TASS reported that the Mongolian leader extended the invitation to Putin in Beijing last year. Like previous visits in 2014 and 2019, Putin's time in Mongolia this week coincides with the 85th anniversary of the Soviet-Mongolian effort to defeat Japanese forces in battles near the Khalkhin-Gol River in Mongolia's east.^[7]

Sources: ^[1]TASS (a), ^[2]Sky News, ^[3]International Criminal Court, ^[4]TASS (b), ^[5]POLITICO, ^[6]TASS (c) and ^[7]TASS (d).

Narratives

• Pro-establishment narrative, as provided by POLITICO. With Mongolia not arresting Russian Pres. Putin and not fulfilling its obligations as a member state to the ICC, the East Asian nation will now most certainly be prosecuted by the ICC for breaching its duty of cooperation. Putin illegally deported hundreds of children to Ukraine, against the wishes of their parents, and he must face justice for these war crimes.
• Pro-Russia narrative, as provided by TASS. Western journalists continue to ignore facts and falsify what really took place in the eastern Donbas since 2014. Russia accepted 5M Ukrainian refugees, a significant number of them children. Most of those came to Russia with parents or relatives. In the minority of cases where there are orphans, they were put in temporary foster families. At least that way, the children were removed from the front lines.

Predictions