[CC may contain inaccuracies] Now, Russian President Vladimir Putin
has arrived in Mongolia for talks with the nation's leaders and defy an arrest
warrant from the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes.
For more let's bring in Bloomberg's Terrence Edwards as he joins us from Ulaanbaatar
this morning. Terrence, first of all, tell us what the
mood is so far. What are locals feeling about this visit
from Putin? Yeah.
There's been a wide array of opinions, of course.
Mongolia has historically had a very close relations with Russia, and most
Mongolians do count Russia as the closest partner.
So not just for diplomacy, but to development.
Mongolia has had, especially since Mongolia was closely aligned with the
Soviet Union. There was a bit of dissent visible.
We did see some protests yesterday. Social media was the entire spectrum.
But really, if we look at Poles attitudes to Ukraine, we see that more
majority of Mongols would prefer a neutral stance as far as it goes to the
invasion into Ukraine. Okay.
And take us through some of the other major, I guess, items in the agenda.
And do you expect any progress to be made, particularly on this NAP gas
pipeline? Yeah.
So the gas pipeline has been an issue Mongolia has long wanted for Mongolia.
It's pretty lucrative. You look at the stability of a of a
natural fuel, gas, fuel source. And then there's the tariffs that
Mongolia could collect as this fuel travels over its territory.
So that's good. The downside to that is definitely well,
Mongolia is going to be only more dependent on its Russian neighbor if we
look at trade. Russia is number two trade partner.
As far as imports into Mongolia goes, 70% of that is fuels, petrol fuels.
And it's also highly dependent on Russia in those freezing months of December and
January, where Mongolia's own power grid is really getting to the upper limits of
what it can actually produce. So that's when Mongolia is usually
importing electricity from Russia as well.
So there's a lot to discuss as far as partnership in the energy and trade side
of things. But really what we're looking at now is
ceremonies for Mongolia has a long history with Mongolia, and that includes
Russia's establishment of the rail system in this country.