Peter Szijjarto announces visit to Washington, but remains silent on important details / “We will make sure that Putin enters Hungary”

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto announced Monday in a press conference broadcast on his Facebook page that he will pay an official visit to Washington on Tuesday, according to Reuters.

US President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he will soon meet his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Budapest for talks on the war in Ukraine.

In his comments on Monday, Szijjarto did not specify who he will meet in Washington after his arrival on Tuesday and what the agenda of the US visit is.

Szijjarto: “We will receive Putin with respect”

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban guaranteed Russian leader Vladimir Putin the conditions for holding the new summit with Donald Trump and for traveling to this meeting that will take place in Budapest, despite the international arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on behalf of the Russian president, Reuters and EFE agencies reported on Monday.

“We will make sure that he enters Hungary, has successful negotiations and then returns home,” the head of Hungarian diplomacy, Peter Szijjarto, told the media.

“There is no need for any kind of consultation with anyone, we are a sovereign country. We will receive (Putin) with respect, host him and give him the conditions to negotiate with the American president,” added Szijjarto, quoted by Agerpres.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban spoke by phone with both Trump and Putin after the US president announced on Thursday that he and his Russian counterpart would have another summit in the next “two weeks” in Budapest. Speaking on Hungarian national radio on Friday morning, Orban said this summit “will be about peace” and if it leads to a peace deal to end the Russian-Ukrainian war it will usher in a new phase of economic development for Hungary and Europe.

The Kremlin, which said the proposal for a “possible summit” between Trump and Putin in Budapest came from the US president, welcomed the idea.

“Hungary, a member country of NATO and the EU, maintains a special position regarding its sovereignty from the point of view of defending its national interests. This undoubtedly commands respect from both leaders,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

According to him, the summit “may indeed take place in two weeks or a little later”. He recalled that Putin and Trump never denied interest in meeting again after the summit held in Alaska on August 15, but the meeting must first be prepared by the heads of the Russian and American diplomacy, Sergei Lavrov and Marco Rubio. The two ministers “will first talk by phone and then meet and start discussing all issues,” Peskov explained.

As for the organization of Putin's trip to Budapest, the logistical details of it are still not clear, but he will inevitably have to fly over the airspace of some NATO countries, the Kremlin spokesman also said.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Putin after Ukrainian children were sent to Russia from Ukrainian territories occupied by Russian troops, but Hungary is in the process of withdrawing from the court.