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- Vladimir Putin plans to visit Mongolia next week despite an ICC arrest warrant out in his name.
- The International Criminal Court issued it last year over the deportation of Ukrainian children.
- Even so, Mongolia, an ICC member, is unlikely to arrest Putin, an international-law expert told BI.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is set to visit Mongolia next week for the first time in a decade.
The Kremlin said the visit is at the invitation of Mongolian President Ukhnaa Khurelsukh "to participate in the ceremonial events dedicated to the 85th anniversary of the joint victory of the Soviet and Mongolian armed forces over the Japanese militarists on the Khalkhin Gol River."
It's seen as a strategic visit for the longtime allies, but there is one small problem: In March 2023, the International Criminal Court put out a warrant for Putin's arrest on charges of unlawful deportation and transfer of children during the war in Ukraine.
As a signatory of the Rome Statute — the founding treaty of the ICC — Mongolia is required to detain people on its soil if they have an arrest warrant out in their name. (Russia also signed the Rome Statute in 2000 but withdrew its signature in 2016 and never became a member of the ICC.)
This is Putin's first visit to an ICC member country since the warrant was issued.
So what will Mongolia do?
"Mongolia is never going to arrest him, of course," said Talita Dias, a research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict.
Dias said that while Mongolia is obligated to arrest Putin, there would probably be no major consequences if it didn't.
Putin's spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Moscow had "no worries" about the upcoming trip. "We have a wonderful dialogue with our friends from Mongolia," he said.
As a judicial institution, the ICC does not have its own police force or enforcement body for its judgments. "It's very difficult to operate in this space of states without enforcement power," Dias said.
In a similar case, South Africa was censured by the ICC for failing to arrest Sudan's then-president, Omar al-Bashir, in 2015.
Dias told Business Insider that in that instance, since Sudan was a nonmember state, the UN Security Council got involved, which escalated the situation.
In Putin's case, it's also the first time the court issued a warrant against the leader of one of the UN Security Council's five permanent members.
Dias said that with Russia a permanent Security Council member, it's unlikely there would be far-reaching consequences for either country in the event of a failure to comply with the warrant.
"There will be legal proceedings, probably at the ICC," she said, adding: "There would be a finding that Mongolia has breached the Rome Statute. Maybe some countries will sanction Mongolia for that, and then that's it."
She told BI: "I'm curious to see what will happen."
Hungary and Armenia have previously assured Putin that he would not be arrested on their soil despite being ICC members.
Russian and Mongolian government representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.