Hungary will not comply with the decision to arrest Putin, accusing those who obstructed his trip of rejecting peace.

 

Hungary

Hungary will not comply with the decision to arrest Putin, accusing those who obstructed his trip of rejecting peace.

Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó announced that Hungarian authorities will not comply with the International Criminal Court's (ICC) arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin upon his arrival in Budapest to meet with his US counterpart, Donald Trump. He noted that his country had previously announced its withdrawal from the court.

"President Putin visited the United States in the summer, and he was not arrested there. If he comes to Hungary, he will not be arrested either," Szijjártó said in response to a question on the matter during an interview with CNN, published by the Hungarian Foreign Ministry. "I hope that European countries will allow him to travel to Hungary (referring to airspace), because his meeting with President Trump is important for the cause of peace."

He considered that "a country's refusal to allow the Russian president's plane to fly (through its airspace) means that it does not want peace."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had previously expressed his willingness to participate in the upcoming Trump-Putin summit, if invited.
"If I am invited to Budapest, if it is an invitation in the form of the three of us meeting, or shuttle diplomacy, meaning that President Trump meets with Putin, and President Trump meets with me, then in one form or another, we will agree," Zelensky told reporters, according to AFP.

While he criticized the choice to hold the summit in Hungary, which has tense relations with Kyiv and is among the EU members most sympathetic to the Kremlin, he considered that another "Budapest" scenario would not be positive either.

European Union foreign policy chief Kaya Kallas said the prospect of Putin traveling to EU member Hungary for talks on Ukraine was "not a pleasant prospect."
In turn, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kestutis Budrys said that Putin has no place in any European capital.

"Putin's only place in Europe is The Hague, before the court, not in any of our capitals," Budrys said ahead of the ministerial meeting.
This comes as the US President announced that he would soon meet with his Russian counterpart in Budapest to continue discussions on how to end the war in Ukraine, following a lengthy phone call between the two. The White House later announced that there would be no meeting between the two presidents at this time.
Putin faces an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court, from which Hungary is withdrawing.