Officials in Mongolia rolled out the red carpet for President Putin today, despite its obligation as a member of the International Criminal Court to arrest the Russian leader for war crimes against Ukraine.

Despite the urging of the ICC, human rights advocates, and Ukrainian officials for the East Asian nation to act on a warrant issued last year, President Khurelsukh gave a warm welcome to Mr. Putin, who was greeted with the usual pomp and circumstance at the capital city of Ulaanbaatar, including a horseback honor guard donning uniforms that were inspired by the historical Mongol ruler Genghis Khan, according to a report from the New York Times.

“The Mongolian government’s failure to carry out the binding ICC arrest warrant for Putin is a heavy blow to the International Criminal Court and the international criminal justice system,” a Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Georgiy Tykhyi, wrote in a post on X. “Mongolia allowed the indicted criminal to escape justice, thereby sharing responsibility for his war crimes. We will work with partners to ensure that this has consequences for Ulaanbaatar.”

In a statement to Agence France-Presse today, an EU spokesperson expressed concerns over Mongolia’s failure to comply with the ICC.

“The EU regrets that Mongolia, a State Party to the Rome Statute of the ICC, did not comply with its obligations under the statute to execute the arrest warrant,” the spokesperson said.

Fadi el-Abdallah, a spokesperson with the ICC, told the BBC last Friday, in advance of Putin’s visit, that Mongolia had an “obligation” to arrest the Russian leader and that the court would look into any violations after they occurred.

“[I]n case of non-cooperation, ICC judges may make a finding to that effect and inform the Assembly of States Parties of it. It is then for the Assembly to take any measure it deems appropriate,” he said.

The ICC, an international tribunal based in The Netherlands, issued a warrant for Putin after accusing him of having children abducted from war-torn Ukraine. Signatories of the court’s founding treaty — known as the Rome Treaty — are legally bound to full cooperation.

“There is an obligation to surrender persons found on the state’s territory, where appropriate, under Article 89 of the Court’s Statute. Failure to do so is very likely to be a breach of international law,” a public international law researcher at the University of the West of England (UWE Bristol), Professor James A. Green, tells The New York Sun. “The key issue is that the ICC has no meaningful enforcement mechanisms when states do not comply with such obligations.”

Putin’s state visit, his first to an ICC member nation since the warrant was issued in March 2023, puts Mongolia in a delicate position. It pits Mongolia’s legal obligations against its dependence on Russia for oil and energy.

“Mongolia imports 95 percent of its petroleum products and over 20 percent of electricity from our immediate neighborhood, which has previously suffered interruption for technical reasons,” a Mongolian spokesperson said in a statement to Politico. “This supply is critical to ensure our existence and that of our people.”

Despite the Mongolian government committing a “flagrant violation” of the Rome Treaty, Mr. Green says the ICC cannot do much.

“Such violations certainly weaken the ICC regime, and enforcement (or lack of) is a big issue. Some would argue it totally undermines the Court — I wouldn’t go that far,” he says. “International Law is based on the consent of sovereign states. There is no higher authority to impose it like we are used to in domestic legal systems — so it is only as strong as states want it to be.”

“That is not a fault of ‘the law’ or the Court, but of politics and power.”