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Vladimir Putin wants to see the world. After his visit to Crimea on Saturday 18 March to celebrate nine years of illegal annexation, and then his visit to Mariupol the following day, Putin is now welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping to his home. The General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, who arrived on Monday 20 March, thus becomes the first person to visit Putin since the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an international arrest warrant against the Russian president, along with Maria Lvova–Belova, Russia’s Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights.
The charge: illegal deportation of Ukrainian children during the Russian invasion.
The news doesn’t seem to have shaken the two nations: since neither has signed or ratified the Rome Statute establishing the ICC, neither recognises its authority. That leaves three days of peaceful negotiations in Moscow, where the pair will discuss solutions to the war in Ukraine, a peace treaty, support for the Russian offensive, and Chinese neutrality.
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