Mongolia should arrest Putin — ICC

Mongolian authorities are obliged to arrest Russian President Vladimir Putin during his visit to the country next week. This was stated in the International Criminal Court (ICC), the BBC reports.

The ICC relies on participating states, including Mongolia, to "enforce its decisions," court spokesman Fadi el-Abdallah told the BBC. Mongolia, like other ICC members, has "obligations to cooperate with the court," this also applies to arrest warrants, including against Putin, he noted.

The trip scheduled for Tuesday will be Putin's first visit to a country that has signed the Rome Statute of the ICC since the court ordered his arrest in March 2023. Earlier, the Ukrainian authorities called on Mongolia to arrest Putin during his visit and hand him over to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Putin's press secretary Dmitry Peskov said that the Kremlin was not worried about the visit, and all its details "were carefully prepared," the BBC Russian service reports.

Vladimir Putin's visit on September 3 will be the first to an ICC member state since an arrest warrant for the Russian president was issued in March last year in connection with the removal of Ukrainian children, Bloomberg reports today.

As a signatory to the Rome Statute, Mongolia is obliged to execute the warrant and arrest Putin if he appears on its territory, the agency notes.

"We do not have such a problem," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday when asked to comment on whether Mongolia had provided guarantees that it would not comply with the ICC warrant.