Ukraine asked Mexico to arrest Putin if he goes to presidential inauguration

This is a very serious request from Ukraine. The Ukrainian Embassy in Mexico issued a statement asking Mexican authorities to arrest Russian President Vladimir Putin if he attends the inauguration of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, Le Figaro reports. “We trust that the Mexican government will respect the international arrest warrant” for Vladimir Putin and “hand him over to the UN judicial body in The Hague,” the embassy said.

Putin charged with war crimes by Ukrainian embassy in Mexico

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Ukrainian embassy in Mexico called Vladimir Putin a “war criminal.” Ukraine thinks the International Criminal Court, which has an arrest warrant out for the Russian president, ought to try him. According to the ICC, it is “the duty of every state to exercise its criminal jurisdiction over those responsible for international crimes.” Vladimir Putin is also charged with war crimes for the deportation of children from occupied areas of Ukraine to Russia.

For his part, Juan Ramon, future Minister of Foreign Affairs of Mexico, said Vladimir Putin’s invitation was purely “protocol” and in no way constituted support for his political actions. However, Ukrainian authorities would like to thank Mexico for inviting Volodymyr Zelensky to Claudia Sheinbaum’s inauguration. Sheinbaum was elected President of the Mexican Republic on June 2. She is the first woman to be elected in the country and will succeed Andrés Manuel López Obrador on October 1, 2024 for a six-year term.

An unlikely case

The arrest of Vladimir Putin is a case of pure political theory. For starters, there is no guarantee that the Russian president will go to Messimo City; in fact, Foreign Affairs Minister Lavrov may well represent him. So the possible arrest would constitute an international provocation of an unprecedented level, such as to trigger reactions that the Mexican government is unlikely to want to unleash.