The Russian president arrives in Kyrgyzstan on his first foreign trip since the issuance of an international arrest warrant against him

Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Kyrgyzstan on Thursday morning on his first official visit abroad since the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant against him, according to what Russian and Kyrgyz media reported.

Putin is scheduled to meet on Thursday with his Kyrgyz counterpart, Sadr Japarov, before participating on Friday in the summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States, which includes a number of former Soviet republics.

This is the Russian President’s first foreign trip since the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant against him last March on claimed charges of his involvement in illegal deportation of Ukrainian children.

Putin, who gave up attending many international summits because of this arrest warrant, isn’t at risk of arrest during this trip as Kyrgyzstan, which is located in Central Asia and is politically close to Moscow, hasn’t ratified the Rome Statute, the treaty establishing the International Criminal Court.

In Kyrgyzstan, the Russian President will hold bilateral talks on Thursday with his Azerbaijani counterpart, Ilham Aliyev, in the first meeting between the two men since Baku regained control of Nagorno-Karabakh for the first time in three decades after a one-day attack that led to the mass exodus of the majority of the Armenian population there.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan will be absent from the summit, according to the Kyrgyz presidency.

The CIS summit will be held on Friday, and in addition to Putin, his main ally, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, and leaders of countries less supportive of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, such as the President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and Shavkat Mirziyoyev of Uzbekistan, will participate.