Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly arrived in Kyrgyzstan on Thursday (October 12), the first time he has traveled outside Russia since the International Criminal Court issued a warrant of arrest for war crimes in Ukraine.
According to the Associated Press, Putin met with Kyrgyz President Sadyr Zhaparov and was to take part in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) summit on Friday (October 13), which Kyrgyzstan is hosting. It was also reported that the leaders of Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan would be attending the summit.
For the first time, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan would be skipping the CIS meeting after relations between Yerevan and the Kremlin soured following the fall of Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia's ratification of the Rome Statute.
Putin's First Trip Post-ICC Arrest Warrant
Prior to his trip to Kyrgyzstan, Putin was limited to traveling inside Russia and Russian-held territories of Ukraine. He visited the partially occupied Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, and Kherson, as well as the annexed Crimean Peninsula earlier this year.
The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Putin for the alleged deportation of children from Ukraine at the onset of Russia's invasion. This meant the countries that had signed the Rome Statute were bound to arrest him should he set foot on their soil.
Because of the warrant, Putin was forced to skip the BRICS summit in South Africa last August. However, the Kremlin said that Russia does not recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC and considers the warrant null and void.
As for the Central Asian countries, most of which are CIS members, only Tajikistan signed and ratified the Rome Statute. Putin traveled to both Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan last year after the invasion of Ukraine and amid increasing international isolation. He also visited other Central Asian nations in 2022, as well as Armenia, Belarus, China, India, and Iran.
Putin is also expected to visit China next month and has additionally accepted an invitation to visit North Korea, but it remained unclear when that might happen.
