Ukraine asks Asian country to arrest Putin
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry has urged Mongolia to arrest Russian President Vladimir Putin and surrender him to the International Criminal Court (ICC) when he visits the country next week.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, however, had already brushed off any concerns about the upcoming visit, stating that all the details have been “worked out” between the two nations. “We have excellent relations with our friends from Mongolia,” Peskov told reporters.
“An arrest warrant has been issued for him by the International Criminal Court, whose jurisdiction is recognized by Mongolia. We call on the Mongolian authorities to comply with the mandatory international arrest warrant and hand Putin over,” to the ICC, Kiev’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Friday, in which it described the Russian president as a “war criminal.”
A spokesperson for the ICC told the BBC that Mongolia has “the obligation” to abide by the court’s regulations. However, the agreement which set up the court, the Rome Statute, provides exemptions in some cases, namely where an arrest would “breach a treaty obligation” of a state or force it to violate the “diplomatic immunity of a person or property of a third state.”
The ICC issued a warrant for Putin back in March 2023, accusing him of “unlawful deportation of population (children)” an “unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine” to Russia.
Moscow has rejected the accusations as absurd, pointing out that evacuation of civilians from a combat zone was not a crime. Moreover, neither Ukraine nor Russia ever signed the Rome Statute, thus the ICC has no jurisdiction in the matter whatsoever.
