President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia arrived in Mongolia late Monday night for his first state visit to a member of the International Criminal Court since it issued a warrant for his arrest in March 2023.
The court accused Mr. Putin and his commissioner for children’s rights of being personally responsible for the “unlawful deportation” and transfer of Ukrainian children to Russia.
In advance of Mr. Putin’s trip, the I.C.C. stated that Mongolia was obligated to arrest Mr. Putin, but Mongolia is heavily dependent on Russia for fuel, and an arrest was considered extremely unlikely.
The Kremlin has shrugged off the possibility.
“There are no worries, we have a great dialogue with our friends from Mongolia,” Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, told reporters on Friday, noting that “all aspects of the visit have been thoroughly prepared.”
Mr. Putin was greeted by what appeared to be a Mongolian military guard at the airport and was spending the night in the capital, Ulaanbaatar, a sign that he is comfortable being in the country.
Mr. Putin’s visit on Tuesday, at the invitation of Mongolia’s president, Ukhnaa Khurelsukh, and in defiance of the I.C.C. arrest warrant, serves as a reminder that Russia still commands strategic sway over its southern neighbor despite efforts to hedge.
With the visit, “Putin gets a symbolic win for sure,” said Alexander Gabuev, the director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin. For Mongolia, he said, the visit shows that the need to maintain the relationship with Moscow outweighs the country’s pledge in 2002 when it signed the Rome Statute ratifying its membership in the I.C.C.
He added that Russia’s adversaries would have to “think twice” about the narrative that “Putin is pariah, he’s ostracized and whenever there is an I.C.C. warrant for a country that’s ratified the Rome Statute, that he will be arrested.”
The international court, based in The Hague in the Netherlands, issued a warrant for Mr. Putin’s arrest last year, accusing him of committing war crimes with the abduction and deportation of Ukrainian children. The court also issued a warrant for Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova.
The I.C.C. has no enforcement mechanism. Countries that have signed on to the court are supposed to detain those who are subject to its arrest warrants. Russia is not a signatory to the court and has consistently rejected its authority.
Mongolia, a landlocked democracy wedged between Russia and China, treads a careful political line in balancing between its two far more powerful neighbors. That has included taking a neutral stance on the war in Ukraine.
While it has looked to the West to ease some of its geopolitical pressure, hosting high-level guests like President Emmanuel Macron of France, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, and the British foreign secretary, David Cameron, it is also economically reliant on its far larger neighbors.
Mongolia shares a 2,100-mile border with Russia and relies on the giant gas-producing neighbor for 95 percent of its fuel. It tries to maintain steady ties with Moscow to help balance relations with Beijing, which also holds considerable influence over Ulaanbaatar by purchasing virtually all Mongolia’s commodity-driven exports.
“The Mongolian political establishment thinks it is easier to manage secure and predictable relations with Moscow” by hosting Mr. Putin, said Munkhnaran Bayarlkhagva, an independent geopolitical analyst who used to work at the National Security Council of Mongolia.
“Ulaanbaatar is choosing to have predictable relations with Moscow and do the damage control later,” Mr. Bayarlkhagva said. “After all, geography cannot be changed.”
Mr. Bayarlkhagva said Mongolia likely determined that there would be little blowback for Mr. Putin’s visit given that there is precedent for members of the International Criminal Court defying the Rome Statute. In 2015, South Africa refused to arrest Sudan’s then president, Omar al-Bashir, during his visit to Johannesburg despite the fact that he was wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged genocide and war crimes in Darfur. Last year, Johannesburg asked the I.C.C. for an exemption from arresting Mr. Putin so he could attend the BRICS summit of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. When it was not granted, Mr. Putin chose to skip the summit instead.
Still, Mongolia’s decision to invite Mr. Putin was condemned by human rights watchdogs.
“Welcoming Putin, an I.C.C. fugitive, would not only be an affront to the many victims of Russian forces’ crimes, but also undermine the crucial principle that no one, no matter how powerful, is above the law,” Maria Elena Vignoli, international justice senior counsel at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement ahead of the visit.
There are strong connections between the ruling Mongolian People’s Party and Russia, a relationship that dates back more than a century to when the People’s Party helped establish Mongolia’s socialist republic with the backing of the Soviet Red Army. Even after Mongolia’s democratic revolution in 1990, ties between the Mongolian People’s Party and Russia remained as a source of its political legitimacy.
The stated reason for Mr. Putin’s visit — to commemorate the 85th anniversary of the defeat of Japanese forces at the Battle of Khalkhin Gol by the Soviet and Mongolian armies — provides an “ideological boost” for the Mongolian People’s Party, Mr. Bayarlkhagva said.
Mr. Putin sought to underscore his country’s role as a protector of Mongolia in a written interview for the country’s biggest daily newspaper Unuudur, noting, “More than ten thousand soldiers and commanders of the Red Army gave their lives in the battle for the freedom and independence of Mongolia.”
No announcements are expected to be made about the proposed Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline, which would help redirect Russian gas supplies that had gone to Europe through Mongolia to reach China instead. In August, Mongolia’s parliament voted not to include the pipeline in its budget for the next four years, in what observers said was indication that it had low expectations that it would be built.
A Western diplomat who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter said the Mongolian government summoned Western envoys to explain their reasoning behind Mr. Putin’s visit. Among them was the need to secure more supplies of fuel and electricity from Russia to prevent a repeat of the shortages the country faced last winter.
The diplomat said Mongolian officials were asked not to give Mr. Putin a platform to propagandize the war in Ukraine.
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