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.