Reports surfaced late on Tuesday that Russia and America indefinitely postponed a proposed in-person meeting between President Donald Trump and Russian strongman Vladimir Putin in Budapest, Hungary.
The reports were preceded by comments by the top Polish diplomat that his country could not assure Putin safe passage in Poland’s skies to get to Hungary.
Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski said in an interview on Tuesday that Poland could “not guarantee” that its court system would not order the nation’s military to intercept Putin’s plane en route to Budapest and arrest Putin.
“We cannot guarantee that an independent Polish court would not order a hypothetical aircraft carrying Putin to be brought to the ground and the suspect handed over to The Hague,” Sikorski told the Polish broadcaster Radio Rodzina, according to a translation by the Moscow Times. He advised the Russian government to “use a different route” that did not require access to Polish skies.
Sikorski condemned the idea of a summit between Putin and Trump in Hungary, but limited his criticism to the Hungarian government rather than Washington. The minister accused Orbán of declaring Hungary “not part of the West but between the West and Russia” by offering to host such a meeting, whose intent was to discuss the potential to end the ongoing Russian invasion of neighboring Ukraine.
Poland is a member of NATO and a close ally of Ukraine’s. Russia has repeatedly flown drones into Polish airspace, irritating Warsaw and risking a potential direct conflict with NATO.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Putin in 2023, accusing him of war crimes related to the ongoing invasion of Ukraine. The warrant is only enforceable by countries that signed the Rome Statute, which created the ICC. Poland is a signatory to the Rome Statute, and so is Hungary – though Prime Minister Viktor Orbán announced this year that he would withdraw from it and has explicitly refused to enforce the arrest warrant for Putin. That withdrawal is on schedule to be formalized in 2026.
President Donald Trump announced last week, following a phone call with Putin, that the two planned to meet in Budapest. The American president framed his outreach to Putin as a refocusing of his peace efforts following the successful signing of a peace agreement by various Middle East parties to end the war in Gaza last week.
“President Putin congratulated me and the United States on the Great Accomplishment of Peace in the Middle East, something that, he said, has been dreamed of for centuries,” Trump wrote. “I actually believe that the Success in the Middle East will help in our negotiation in attaining an end to the War with Russia/Ukraine.”
The phone call yielded an agreement to hold discussions between high-level officials from both countries.
“President Putin and I will then meet in an agreed upon location, Budapest, Hungary, to see if we can bring this ‘inglorious’ War, between Russia and Ukraine, to an end,” Trump added.
Orbán enthusiastically celebrated the news, crediting the possibility of a meeting to the unique geopolitical position Hungary occupied.
“For three years, we have been the only country that has consistently, openly, loudly, and actively advocated for peace,” Orbán said in an interview with Hungarian state radio.
A day after his conversation with Putin, Trump met in person with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House. Zelensky said after his White House engagement that he was willing to fly to Budapest and join the meeting with Putin – a notable offer given the acrimonious relationship between Zelensky and Orbán, in addition to evident distaste for the man leading the invasion of his country.
“How can there be some deals without us about us?” Zelensky told NBC News, stating he told Trump he was “ready” to meet Putin in Hungary.
The Kremlin responded to those comments by stating that “no details” existed about the alleged Budapest summit.
On Tuesday, the state propaganda outlet Russia Today (RT) reported on the anonymous reports in American media, but appeared to offer hope of some form of engagement in the future via quotes from Russian officials. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov, for example, insisted on Tuesday that some “significant event” would soon take place, without elaborating. Russia’s most abrasive Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, disparaged the reports of the canceled summit as an “info-circus” – implying a meeting in Hungary was still possible.
While reports indicate the Hungarian meeting will not be happening anytime soon, the high-level engagement between Russia and America is underway. The State Department confirmed on Monday that Secretary of State Marco Rubio held a conversation with his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, as expected. The government agency offered few details on the conversation, however.
“The Secretary emphasized the importance of upcoming engagements as an opportunity for Moscow and Washington to collaborate on advancing a durable resolution of the Russia-Ukraine war, in line with President Trump’s vision,” the State Department noted.
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