Putin Plans First Visit to I.C.C. Member State Since Arrest Warrant

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia is scheduled to visit Mongolia next week, the Kremlin said on Thursday, despite the Central Asian country’s membership in the International Criminal Court, which issued a warrant for his arrest last year.

Mr. Putin plans to visit the country on Sept. 3 on the invitation of Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh, the president of Mongolia, to commemorate the 85th anniversary of a joint military victory, the Kremlin said in a statement. It will be the Russian president’s first trip to an I.C.C. member nation since March 2023, when the court accused him of war crimes in Ukraine and issued a warrant for his arrest.

As part of their membership in the I.C.C., countries are bound by international law to arrest people for whom the court has issued arrest warrants (though that requirement is not always observed).

Here is what to know about the trip.

Will Mr. Putin be arrested?

The Kremlin does not appear to be concerned about Mr. Putin’s security on the trip.

“There are no worries. We have excellent dialogue with our friends in Mongolia,” Dmitri S. Peskov, the spokesman for the Kremlin, said in an interview posted to Telegram, a messaging platform, on Friday, adding that “all aspects of the visit were carefully prepared.”

Mongolia’s Foreign Ministry announced the visit in a news release on Friday.

Mr. Putin is unlikely to face arrest if he is invited into the country, said David Scheffer, a former U.S. ambassador and a chief negotiator of the statute that established the I.C.C. Instead, he added, the Russian president is likely to use the visit to “propagandize and taunt the I.C.C. and Ukraine.”

Mongolia is the country taking a real risk, Mr. Scheffer said, and it is likely to face diplomatic pressure from the I.C.C. and other member states to rescind the invitation. “Mongolia may be jeopardizing some trade and development assistance with other I.C.C. members, as well as diplomatic sanctions, if it entertains Putin without handcuffing him,” he said.

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry called on Mongolian officials to arrest Mr. Putin in a statement on Friday.

Mongolian and I.C.C. officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

This is not the first time an I.C.C. member state stands to face backlash should it fail to arrest someone for whom the court has issued a warrant, said Mr. Scheffer, who pointed to Omar Hassan al-Bashir, the former president of Sudan.

The court issued warrants for Mr. al-Bashir’s arrest in 2009 and 2010, charging him with genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. He eluded arrest in South Africa and Jordan, both of which are I.C.C. member states, though the trips drew international condemnation.

What is Russia and the I.C.C.’s relationship?

A little over a year after Russia invaded Ukraine, the court accused Mr. Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, a top Russian official, of abducting and deporting children from Ukraine, which is a member of the I.C.C., during Russia’s war there. Russian officials have denied the charges.

In June, the court issued arrest warrants for two Russian security officials in connection with strikes against civilian targets.

The I.C.C. was established in 2002 to prosecute people for crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide under the Rome Statute, a 1998 treaty. Before its creation, the United Nations Security Council hosted ad hoc tribunals to prosecute atrocities in places like the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

More than 120 countries are members of the I.C.C.; the United States is not. But the court cannot try defendants in absentia and has no way to force an accused individual to stand trial. Instead, it relies on officials in member states to detain suspects so they can stand trial in The Hague. Russia, which is not a member of the court, says it will not surrender its own officials.

Mr. Putin previously skipped a long-planned summit with heads of state from Brazil China and South Africa after South Africa, the host country, faced mounting pressure over its warm relations with the Kremlin. Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, attended the August 2023 meeting in Mr. Putin’s place.

Oleg Matsnev contributed reporting.