Plans vs. flight bans. Hungary is eager to host Putin despite the ICC’s arrest warrant. Bu
Source: Meduza.io
Following an hours-long phone call with Vladimir Putin on October 16, U.S. President Donald Trump announced plans to meet with his Russian counterpart in Hungary. The fact that Putin is facing an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for war crimes should have made a meeting on European soil an automatic no-go for the Kremlin. But Hungarian officials were quick to make public assurances that they would “receive Putin with respect” instead of putting him in handcuffs. Budapest is in the process of withdrawing from the ICC and has had no qualms about flouting international law in the past. However, the Kremlin would still have to find a way around the European Union’s blanket ban on Russian aircraft for Putin to visit landlocked Hungary. Meduza explains why E.U. sanctions could prove a bigger obstacle to Trump’s summit than the arrest warrant against Putin.
A year-long exit
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has had an arrest warrant out for Vladimir Putin since March 2023, when it indicted the Russian president for ordering the illegal deportations of children from Ukraine’s occupied territories. By all appearances, however, this is of little consequence to Hungary.
In fact, Budapest is in the process of quitting the ICC altogether. The Hungarian government announced the decision to leave the global tribunal on April 3, 2025 — the same day Budapest welcomed Benjamin Netanyahu for a state visit despite an ICC arrest warrant for the Israeli prime minister for charges of war crimes and genocide.
The Hungarian parliament voted to withdraw from the Rome Statute, the ICC’s founding treaty, on May 20. Two weeks later, Budapest officially notified the United Nations secretary-general that Hungary was exiting the treaty. However, under Article 127 of the Rome Statute, the withdrawal will only take legal effect one year after the written notification — specifically on June 2, 2026.
Until then, Hungary remains a full member of the ICC and is still bound by all of the Rome Statute’s obligations, including cooperation with arrest warrants and investigations. This means Hungarian authorities are supposed to immediately take measures to arrest Putin if he steps foot in the country before June 2, 2026.
Ignoring the ICC
While Hungarian courts don’t have the authority to overturn the ICC arrest warrant itself, under Article 59 of the Rome Statute, they would have the right to grant Putin interim release in the event of “urgent and exceptional circumstances.” However, the court would also have to determine whether there are “necessary safeguards” to ensure that Hungary can fulfill its duty to surrender him to the ICC. In other words, Budapest would ultimately be expected to hand Putin over.
That said, Hungary can simply ignore the ICC arrest warrant for Putin, as it did in the case of Netanyahu. The ICC has no effective leverage over countries that fail to comply with the Rome Statute — and Putin has already managed to skirt its arrest warrant twice before.
The Russian president visited Mongolia in September 2024 and Tajikistan in October 2025, despite the fact that both countries are ICC members. Instead of taking steps to arrest Putin, both Mongolia and Tajikistan simply snubbed their obligations.
The Hungarian authorities have already promised to welcome Putin. “We will ensure that he enters Hungary, has successful negotiations here, and then returns home,” Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto told journalists on October 17. Earlier, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban wrote on Facebook that he had spoken to Putin and preparations for the summit with Trump “are going full steam ahead.”
The airspace problem
Given the ICC arrest warrant for Putin and the multitude of sanctions against Russia, the prospect of the Russian president traveling to an E.U. country has naturally raised questions about whether he could be prevented from flying over the bloc.
The ICC arrest warrant is unlikely to be much of an obstacle, although member states have faced criticism for breaching their obligations when allowing use of their airspace before. For example, in July, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, called out Italy, France, and Greece for allowing Israel’s Netanyahu to fly over their territory en route to the United States.
“The governments of Italy, France, and Greece must explain why they provided airspace and safe passage to ICC-wanted Benjamin Netanyahu, whom they are obligated to arrest,” she wrote on X. (This came just months after Netanyahu was allowed to fly over Greece, North Macedonia, and Serbia on his way to Hungary.)
The European Union’s flight ban on Russian aircraft is seemingly a bigger hurdle. However, a European Commission spokesperson clarified on October 17 that there is no bloc-wide travel ban against Putin himself (only an asset freeze). In other words, to get to landlocked Hungary, Putin would just need to find a way around the ban on all Russian planes flying through the airspace of all 27 E.U. member countries.
While the E.U. sanctions regime allows national governments to make exceptions to the flight ban, obtaining the necessary exemptions could prove complicated for Putin. “He needs to get permission to fly over certain countries. I don’t want to speculate on how this will go. But I’m happy I’m not his travel planner,” a senior E.U. diplomat told Politico.
The original article: belongs to Meduza.io .