Mongolia’s failure to arrest Vladimir Putin on an international criminal court (ICC) warrant dealt a “heavy blow” to the international criminal law system, Ukraine’s foreign ministry said on Monday as the Russian president arrived for talks likely to focus on a new gas pipeline connecting Russia and China. Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesperson Heorhiy Tykhyi said: “Mongolia has allowed an accused criminal to evade justice, thereby sharing responsibility for the war crimes.”
The ICC said last week all its members had an “obligation” to detain those sought by the court. In practice, though, there is little that can be done if Mongolia does not comply. “President Putin is a fugitive from justice,” said Altantuya Batdorj, executive director of Amnesty International Mongolia. “Any trip to an ICC member state that does not end in arrest will encourage President Putin’s current course of action and must be seen as part of a strategic effort to undermine the ICC’s work.”
In Brussels, the European Commission urged Mongolia to meet its obligations undertaken when joining the Rome statute of the ICC in 2002. Human Rights Watch noted that Mongolia was among 94 countries that signed in June a joint statement declaring their “unwavering support” for the ICC. Erdenebalsuren Damdin, a Mongolian, is one of the judges on the ICC bench. Mongolia welcomed Putin with a guard of honour and gave no indication he was at risk of arrest, while there was no official Mongolian response to the calls for it to honour the warrant.
Russian invaders advanced on 477 sq km (184 square miles) of Ukrainian territory in August, Moscow’s biggest monthly increase since October 2022, according to data supplied by the Institute for the Study of War and analysed by Agence France-Presse. Ukraine meanwhile made its own rapid gains in early August, advancing more than 1,100 square kilometres into Russia’s Kursk region in two weeks, though its progress has slowed recently as the situation there has stabilised.
Russia claimed to have captured a string of villages and settlements in eastern Ukraine in recent weeks, inching towards the city of Pokrovsk. The Russian defence ministry said on Monday that it had captured the Donetsk village of Skuchne, without providing further details. Volodymyr Zelenskiy insisted the frontline had not moved. “In the Pokrovsk direction, no matter how difficult it is, there has been no progress for two days. This is what the commander-in-chief told me.”
Putin on Monday acknowledged the difficulties Ukraine’s Kursk invasion – the largest attack by a foreign army on Russia since the second world war – was putting on Russian border regions. “People are experiencing and undergoing severe hardship, especially in the Kursk region,” Putin said in a speech to schoolchildren at a televised event in Siberia. “But the enemy did not achieve the main task that they set themselves: to stop our offensive in the Donbas … We have not had such a pace of offensive in the Donbas for a long time.”
Russian forces launched a missile attack on Ukraine’s central city of Dnipro on Monday, killing one person and injuring three while damaging homes, said the Dnipropetrovsk regional governor, Serhiy Lysak. A Russian attack on Ukraine’s north-eastern city of Kharkiv on Monday hit a residential area and wounded at least 13 people, local officials said.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday that Ukraine’s western allies should not only allow their weapons to be used for strikes deep inside Russia, but also supply Kyiv with more of them. After a meeting with the Dutch prime minister, Dick Schoof, in the south-eastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia on Monday, Zelenskiy said Kyiv was “more positive” about the prospects of getting such permission.
Schoof announced his government would give Ukraine €200m to help protect and repair the electricity infrastructure targeted almost daily by Russian bombs. He said the Netherlands would continue providing F-16 fighter jets and munitions to Ukraine and noted a plan floated last month by the US senator Lindsey Graham to let retired F-16 pilots from other countries join the fight in Ukraine. “But we have to look into those things, with all the countries involved with the F-16 coalition.”
Schoof visited an underground school in Zaporizhzhia. “It must never be normal for children to have to go to school underground. It must never become normal for people’s homes to be cold because power plants have been bombed,” Schoof said. In Kyiv, Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched an overnight barrage of drones and cruise and ballistic missiles as children prepared to return to school on Monday after summer vacation. Three people were wounded and two kindergartens were damaged.
Children and parents gathered outside a damaged school in Kyiv as firefighters put out flames and removed rubble. One mother arrived with her seven-year-old daughter, Sophia, unaware it had been hit. It was Sophia’s first day at a new school, her mother said, after a frightening night. “We hid in the bathroom, where it was relatively safe,” said the mother, who gave only her first name, Olena.
Large numbers of Ukrainian refugee children are expected to begin attending Polish schools this autumn for the first time. For many, Monday will be their first time back at school in years since the double disruptions of the pandemic and the war. Many have been continuing their online education with schools in Ukraine from Poland. But now the Polish government says if they don’t attend in person it will withhold a monthly benefit of 800 złotys, about US$200, that is paid to families.
Ukraine’s defence minister, Rustem Umerov, said he met his French counterpart Sebastien Lecornu on Monday to discuss the situation on the frontline and air defences. Joint defence industries ventures were also discussed, he added.
A senior Russian military commander, Maj Gen Valery Mumindzhanov, has been detained in a fraud case. He is the ninth top military figure to be arrested on charges of fraud, bribery or abuse of office in recent months. The Leningrad military district deputy commander was detained on suspicion of receiving a bribe of hundreds of thousands of dollars.