Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday that it has not yet been determined what route his boss would take to reach Budapest.
— Hungary, being a member of NATO and the EU, has a special position in terms of defending its own interests, which earns respect from Putin and Trump, Peskov said. He added that technical issues regarding the meeting of the two presidents are to be determined by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Their meeting is scheduled to take place next week.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Friday that Hungary will make every effort to ensure that the leaders of the United States and Russia meet in the Hungarian capital. Trump announced on Thursday after a 2.5-hour phone call with Putin that he would meet him in Budapest. Hungary has already declared that it is ready to organize a peace summit, also in a tripartite format (i.e. with the participation of the presidents of the USA, Russia and Ukraine).
The article continues below the video
So far, due to Russia's ongoing aggression against Ukraine, most NATO countries have refused to consent to flights of official Russian delegations over their territory. This requires Russia to bypass the territories of these countries and choose routes over neutral areas (i.e. over the open sea that is not under the jurisdiction of any country) or to use the airspace of countries with which Moscow has good relations.
The case in question is complicated because Hungary has no access to the sea, and most of the countries with which it borders are NATO members. Despite this, each country makes its own decisions regarding whether to allow aircraft carrying official delegations of other countries to fly in its airspace. In this case, it should be expected that Russia will apply for permission for such a flight to one of the countries with which it maintains relatively good and least complicated bilateral relations.
How Putin will reach Budapest. Two possible routes
A flight path over Belarus, Poland and Slovakia is very unlikely due to politics and the important role of Warsaw in supporting Ukraine. It is much more realistic to use the Black Sea route and the territory of Bulgaria, and further – Serbia. The relations of these countries with Moscow are better than those of, for example, Romania. The latter – like Poland – has repeatedly openly criticized Russian actions towards Ukraine.
Another possible solution is to choose a route along the Mediterranean and Adriatic Seasand then, for example, over Albania or Montenegro and further over Serbia. However, in the latter case, this is debatable because Russia is accused of attempting to stage a coup d'état in Montenegro in 2016, which was intended to prevent that country from joining NATO.
ICC verdict in the Putin case
The second potential problem is the arrest warrant that the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued against Putin on March 17, 2023 in connection with the actions that Russia took in Ukraine and which, according to Article 8 of the Rome Statute (the document that is the basis for the establishment and functioning of the ICC), are war crimes (forced resettlement to Russia; in the ICC's opinion, existing evidence related to actions of the Russian army in Ukraine allow for the expansion of the allegations).
Countries that recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC are obliged to arrest and hand over wanted persons to the ICC if they are on territory under their control. Pursuant to Article 27 of the ICC Statute, prosecuted persons do not enjoy the immunities of heads of state or diplomats, which is the basis for their detention and transfer to the Court. Despite this, it is unlikely that a similar practice would apply to Putin. There are relevant precedents in this case – after the order was issued, the Russian leader visited Mongolia, which is a party to the ICC agreement, where he was not arrested. A similar issue was the detention of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was not detained during his stay in Hungary while he was subject to an arrest warrant by the Court.
Without political will on the part of the superpowers – including the USA (which signed the statute, but later withdrew its signature) – there is no real chance of implementing the ICC's orders against politicians who are leaders of countries with great political and military potential, especially those who are permanent members of the UN Security Council, as is the case with Russia. This is even more so in the situation in question, when the planned meeting is part of the US president's peace efforts and is expected to end the Russian-Ukrainian war.
