On 3 September 2024, the Russian President Putin, whose arrest is sought by the ICC for alleged war crimes committed during the war in Ukraine (see eg Sergey Vasiliev), made his first visit to an ICC State Party (Mongolia) since the issuance of the arrest warrant. Despite demands for Putin’s arrest, Mongolia did not do so. On 24 October 2024 the Pre-Trial Chamber II (‘PTC II’) rendered a decision in which it found Mongolia in non-compliance with its request to arrest Putin (‘Mongolia Decision’). While this finding was predictable, the decision’s reasoning deviates from precedents in a way that signals a new mindset of the PTC II. My argument is that this mindset – what I propose to call ‘cynical solipsism’ – could be detrimental to the life of the institution. Given the Court’s ever demanding task to seek arrest of two political leaders of non-State Parties, Putin and the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, the ICC should seriously reconsider how to engage with States to secure their cooperation.
A Conversion of Reasoning and its Signification
