Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Mongolia on Monday. He is a member of the international court that has issued a warrant for his arrest.
The official visit, during which he will meet Mongolian leader Ukhnaa Khurelsukh on Tuesday, is Putin’s first to a member state of the International Criminal Court since the court issued an arrest warrant for him nearly 18 months ago on charges of war crimes in Ukraine.
Ukraine has called on Mongolia to arrest Putin and hand him over to a court in The Hague. A spokesman for Putin said last week that the Kremlin is not worried about the visit.
Members of the international court are required to arrest suspects if an arrest warrant is issued, but the court has no enforcement mechanism.
Mongolia, a sparsely populated country between Russia and Chinais heavily dependent on the former for fuel and electricity and on the latter for investments in the mining sector.
The ICC has accused Putin of being responsible for the abductions of children from Ukrainewhere fighting has been going on for 2½ years.
Putin and the Mongolian leader will attend a ceremony on Tuesday to mark the 1939 victory of Soviet and Mongolian troops over Japanese forces that had seized control of Manchuria in northeastern China. Thousands of soldiers died in months of fighting in a dispute over where the border between Manchuria and Mongolia lay.
Although Putin has faced international isolation over the invasion of Ukraine, he visited North Korea and Vietnam last month and has also visited China twice in the past year.
Last year, he attended a meeting in Johannesburg via video link after the South African government lobbied against his attendance at the BRICS summit, a group that includes China and other emerging economies. South Africa is a member of the ICC.