WARSAW: Poland warned Russia’s President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday against traveling through its airspace for a summit in Hungary with US President Donald Trump, stating it could be forced to execute an international arrest warrant if he did.
Trump said last week that he planned to meet Putin in the Hungarian capital Budapest as part of his efforts to broker an end to the war in Ukraine.
The International Criminal Court, based in The Hague, issued an arrest warrant against Putin in 2023, accusing him of the war crime of illegally deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine. Russia does not recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction and denies the allegations.
“I cannot guarantee that an independent Polish court won’t order the government to escort such an aircraft down to hand the suspect to the court in The Hague,” Poland’s Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski told Radio Rodzina.
The ICC warrant obligates the court’s member states to arrest Putin, if he sets foot on their territory.
