Vladimir Putin, the target of an ICC arrest warrant issued in March, is making his first foreign trip to Kyrgyzstan on Thursday. The Russian president is accused by the international organization of deporting Ukrainian children.
This is the first time he has traveled abroad since he received an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC) for “deporting” Ukrainian children. Vladimir Putin is traveling to Kyrgyzstan on Thursday, October 12, to meet some of his rare allies.
The Russian president, who has abstained from attending several international summits as a result of this arrest warrant, is not at risk of being arrested during this trip, since the Central Asian country near Moscow has not ratified the Rome Statute, the court’s founding treaty .
Vladimir Putin will hold a meeting with his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliev on Thursday, the first since Baku’s victory in Nagorno-Karabakh, while Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, whose relations with Moscow have been strained, will be absent. During this visit, which coincides with the 20th anniversary of the opening of Russia’s Kant military base in Kyrgyzstan, the Russian head of state will also speak with Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov.
He will then take part on Friday in a summit of the countries of the former USSR, in the presence of his main ally, Belarusian Alexander Lukashenko, but also leaders more dubious about the invasion of Ukraine, such as Kazakh Kassym-Jomart Tokaïev and Uzbek Chavkat Mirzioyev.
Absent from international summits
Vladimir Putin, who sent Russian troops to attack Ukraine in February 2022, has been under an ICC arrest warrant since March, a decision Moscow considers “null and void.” In recent months he has been careful to avoid large international gatherings and appeared largely absent from the BRICS summit in South Africa in August and the G20 summit in India in September.
The Russian president said in early October that he was avoiding international summits so as not to cause “problems” for the organizers. “When I come, there will be political shows, political attacks,” he reasoned, believing that there was “enough to do at home anyway.”
Vladimir Putin, whom the West wants to make a pariah, is also expected in China in October at the invitation of his ally Xi Jinping to take part in an international economic forum. This will be his first trip to this country, a close partner, since the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine. His diplomatic chief Sergei Lavrov will travel there from October 16th to 18th.