The President of Mexico Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has rejected a request by Ukraine to arrest Vladimir Putin, if the Russian leader were to land in the Latin American country this fall for the inauguration of its new head of state.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Putin last year in connection with the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Mexico is one 124 nations recognizing the jurisdiction of The Hague-based body.

“We cannot do that,” Lopez Obrador replied when asked by journalists during a press conference on Thursday if the Mexican authorities are really going to detain the Russian president. “It is not up to us,” he added, as cited by Reuters.

Izvestia newspaper had reported on the previous day that Mexico had invited Putin to the inauguration this October of its new president, Claudia Sheinbaum. According to the Mexican Embassy in Moscow, the Russian leader will decide whether to attend the ceremony himself or send some other high-ranking official to represent the country. The Ukrainian embassy in Mexico reacted to the news by reminding the country’s government that Putin is wanted by the ICC and by asking it to arrest the Russian leader if he comes. “We are confident that the Mexican government would comply with the international arrest warrant by handing the aforementioned person over to the judicial body of the UN in The Hague,” Kiev’s diplomatic mission said in a statement on Wednesday. It also thanked Mexico City for inviting Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky to the inauguration.

Mexico has taken a neutral stance toward the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, with Lopez Obrador a critic of US military aid to Kiev and of the sanctions imposed on Moscow by the West. The outgoing president’s successor, Sheinbaum, is a close ally and is expected to continue his policies.

In March 2023, the ICC formally accused Putin and Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights of “forcible transfer of the population,” referring to evacuations of minors from combat zones amid fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces. Moscow has dismissed the allegations as false, while also accusing the court of being politically compromised. Russia, which never ratified the 1998 Rome Statute that established the ICC, also pointed out that the UN body had no authority over it.

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