Any European country that refuses to grant the Russian president’s plane passage doesn’t want peace, Peter Szijjarto has said
Hungary will not enforce the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin if he visits the country for talks with US President Donald Trump, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Wednesday.
Putin and Trump agreed last week to meet in Budapest to discuss possible steps toward a peace deal in Ukraine. The plan has drawn criticism from Brussels and Kiev, neither of which were invited, with some Western officials arguing that the Russian leader should not be allowed to travel due to the ICC warrant.
The ICC issued a warrant for Putin in 2023 over alleged deportations of Ukrainian children. Moscow, which does not recognize the court’s jurisdiction, has dismissed the charges as politically motivated. Earlier this year, Kiev came up with a list of 339 children that were supposedly evacuated by Moscow. Russian officials, however, have said there was not “a single kidnapped child” on the list and that most of the children were actually either adults or had already ended up in Europe.
Szijjarto noted in an interview with CNN that when Putin visited the US back in August to meet Trump, he was not arrested. “If he comes to Hungary, he’s not going to be arrested either,” the minister said.
Hungary has recently begun withdrawing from the ICC, although the formal process has not yet been completed.
Szijjarto further stressed that any European countries attempting to hinder Putin’s transit to Hungary would be demonstrating that “they do not want peace.”
His comments come after multiple EU officials expressed dissatisfaction with plans for the Putin-Trump summit to take place in Hungary. The bloc’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said it was “not nice” that Putin will visit an EU country despite the ICC warrant.
Poland has indicated that it could even intercept the Russian leader’s plane if it enters Polish airspace. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Warsaw’s comments suggest it is “prepared to resort to terrorism.”
Moscow has repeatedly accused Kiev and its Western European backers of refusing to negotiate in good faith and seeking to undermine peace efforts in order to prolong the conflict.
