US President Donald Trump greets Russian President Vladimir Putin on the tarmac after they arrived at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, on August 15, 2025. Putin is expected to come to Budapest for another meeting with Trump about Ukraine in the days ahead. (Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP) (Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images)
AFP via Getty Images
Europe and the civilized world should forcefully oppose any visit by Vladimir Putin to meet Donald Trump in Budapest. Indeed, a meeting for Trump to meet Putin in Budapest would be a stark rejection of the international rule of law, the democratic world, and, most painfully, an insult to Ukraine. After all, Budapest is where Russia, Ukraine, the United States, and the United Kingdom signed the Budapest Memorandum in 1994, promising to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity in exchange for Kyiv’s relinquishment of its nuclear arsenal. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014 and again in 2022 broke that promise. Hosting a so-called “peace summit” in the same city today — with the same aggressor — would symbolically repeat that betrayal. How can Russia be expected to honour a new peace agreement when it has already violated the first one signed right there?
International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Karim Khan (2nd L) and Ukraine’s prosecutor general Iryna Venediktova (L) address a press conference in The Hague on May 31, 2022 as the ICC dispatched the largest team of investigators in the court’s 20-year history to probe suspected war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine. Ukraine has identified several thousand suspected war crimes in the eastern Donbas region where Russian forces are pressing their offensive, Venediktova said. The final report later resulted in a summons for the arrest of Vladimir Putin for war crimes. (Photo by Ramon van Flymen / various sources / AFP) / Netherlands OUT (Photo by RAMON VAN FLYMEN/Ramon van Flymen/ANP/AFP via Getty Images)
Ramon van Flymen/ANP/AFP via Getty Images
Legally Binding International Law
But symbolism is only part of the story. The other part is law — actual, legally binding, international law. According to an International Criminal Court (ICC) news release, Vladimir Putin is an indicted war criminal, wanted by the ICC “for the unlawful transfer of population from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation, in prejudice of Ukrainian children.” In particular, a recent Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab study states that Putin is implicated in the kidnapping of 35,000 Ukrainian children. Given these facts, the key point is that every member of the European Union, including Hungary, that is a party to the ICC’s founding treaty, the Rome Statute, is therefore legally required to facilitate the arrest Putin for this war crime the moment he steps on Hungarian soil.
More specifically, under the Rome Statute, ICC member states have clear and mandatory obligations: to cooperate with investigations, facilitate arrests and transfers, and allow access to evidence. These duties are not optional. Signing the Rome Treaty does not mean a country can selectively apply it when convenient or politically expedient. The obligations are binding. To disregard them is to undermine not just the ICC but the entire concept of the rules-based international order that has guided global stability for decades.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin meets with Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban at the Kremlin in Moscow on July 5, 2024. Orban, who is a friend of Putin’s, has agreed to host Putin and Trump for peace talks about Ukraine to be held in Budapest in the days ahead. (Photo by Valery SHARIFULIN / POOL / AFP) (Photo by VALERY SHARIFULIN/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
POOL/AFP via Getty Images
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s recent notice of withdrawal from the ICC is not an excuse to disregard the rules, since, according to a Human Rights News Release, the withdrawal does not take effect until June 2026. Until then, Hungary remains fully bound by the Rome Statute’s provisions. Interpol officers should be able to enter Hungary and act on the ICC warrant. If Budapest allows Putin to stroll through an EU capital unchallenged, it will undermine the entire system of international justice built to prevent exactly this kind of impunity.
Does The Law Still Matter?
Allowing Putin to fly through European airspace or stroll into a summit in Budapest would not just mock the ICC — it would make a mockery of the rule of law and democracy itself. Euronews reports that the EU has poured over $160 billion into defending Ukraine and its democratic order— far more, by the way, than the United States has spent since 2022. But why invest so heavily in Ukraine’s survival, and by extension Europe’s future, only to throw it away by rolling out the red carpet for the man who started the Ukraine war and disregards these principles? This isn’t just about Ukrainian territory. It’s about whether law still matters for all of us—whether treaties, norms, and common decency can still hold naked power to account.
What About The Summit In Alaska?
Some might argue that the United States once hosted Putin on its soil, but this comparison is false. The United States is not a signatory to the ICC and thus not bound by its obligations; Hungary and all of its immediate European neighbours are. This distinction is crucial. The democratic world cannot champion the rule of law one moment and then disregard it the next. Either we uphold the law or we don’t. Trump may dwell in a world where he believes he can do whatever he wants, regardless of the law. However, the civilized world — must not follow him down this path.
A Clear Message For Authoritarianism
This also presents an opportunity for all of us to send a clear message to leaders like Viktor Orbán and others flirting with authoritarianism, including many Trump supporters in the United States, that the rule of law is not a menu from which one can pick and choose. Hungary’s flirtation with Putinism and defiance of democratic norms are not just domestic quirks; they are part of a global pattern of democratic backsliding that must be confronted, not indulged. Upholding the ICC’s warrant against Putin is not only about Ukraine — it’s about setting a precedent for accountability that leaders like Orbán need to face as a lesson in what it means to belong to the free world. And it could either lead to Orbán’s exit as Hungary’s leader, or Hungary’s exit from the EU in the future.
This moment demands moral clarity. Europe must reaffirm that no ICC-indicted war criminal should be permitted to travel freely, let alone be welcomed in an EU capital. Anything less would betray the victims of Russia’s aggression, the sacrifices of Ukraine’s defenders, and the core principles that distinguish democracy from tyranny.
What Is The Lesson?
Vladimir Putin didn’t need permission to travel to Alaska to meet Trump — but he does to visit Hungary. He should never be granted the privilege of meeting there. Furthermore, despite Trump’s efforts to legitimize Putin by hosting him on American soil, agreeing to this meeting in Budapest, and attempting to enable Putin to rejoin the G-7 — all such initiatives should be condemned for undermining democracy and the rule of law. The last century taught us the cost of indulging autocrats; this one will judge whether we remembered the lesson.
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