Moscow said it wasn’t concerned about the possibility of Putin being arrested in Mongolia.
“There are no worries; we have a great dialogue with our friends from Mongolia,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday. “All aspects of the visit were carefully prepared.”
The Ukrainian government called on Mongolia to execute the ICC warrant against Putin during his visit to the country.
Kyiv “hopes Mongolia understands that Putin is a war criminal,” the Ukrainian foreign ministry said in a statement on Friday. “We call on the Mongolian authorities to execute the mandatory international arrest warrant and hand over Putin” to the ICC, it said.
“The kidnapping of Ukrainian children is only one of the many crimes for which Putin and the rest of the military-political leadership of the Russian Federation must face justice,” the ministry said.
Oleksandr Merezhko, the head of foreign relations committee in the Ukrainian parliament, suggested that Ukraine start negotiations with Mongolia to convince it to execute the arrest warrant. “If these negotiations do not lead to the desired result, then you can turn to the Assembly of the participating states, which should be held at the end of this year, he said in a Facebook post.
The ICC, based in The Hague, has 124 members around the world. Russia and the U.S. are not members.