Putin's visit to Budapest will put EU and NATO in "awkward" position – Reuters

A planned visit by Russian ruler Vladimir Putin to Hungary, a member of both the European Union and NATO, will put Ukraine's allies in an awkward position.

Source: Reuters, citing European officials and diplomats, as reported by European Pravda

Details: The choice of a country which belongs to alliances that are leading international efforts to help Ukraine and isolate Russia to host the summit has surprised diplomats and analysts almost as much as the fact of the meeting itself.

It was in Budapest in 1994 that the United States, the United Kingdom and Russia signed the Budapest Memorandum, which granted Ukraine security assurances in exchange for giving up its nuclear weapons. The signatories pledged to respect Ukraine's territorial integrity – a promise shattered by Russia's full-scale invasion of its neighbour in 2022.

"It is awkward for both the EU and NATO. Timing is everything: the Tomahawk threat is growing and all of a sudden Putin wants to meet. But if [US President Donald] Trump can pull something off, he should do it," said a senior European official.

Putin is wanted under an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant for the illegal deportation of children from Ukraine, but few observers expect this to be an issue for him in Budapest.

Hungary has announced that it intends to withdraw from the ICC, but the process has not yet been completed, meaning that technically, Putin should be arrested if he visits Budapest. However, as one senior EU diplomat told Reuters, "nobody will be surprised if the Hungarians don't arrest Putin".

Botond Feledy, a geopolitical analyst at Red Snow Consulting, said that choosing Budapest for the meeting means Putin could "hit several birds with one stone".

"On the one hand, he will be holding talks on the Ukraine war in an EU country without EU leaders attending," he said. "For Putin, this is a much stronger blow to the stomach for Europe symbolically on several levels compared with this meeting being held in Türkiye or elsewhere."

Feledy also noted that the meeting will exclude Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for the second time, following the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska, and could potentially worsen relations between Budapest and Kyiv.

European officials also believe Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán will make use of his role as a mediator in the summit ahead of next year's elections. His Fidesz party is trailing behind the centre-right Tisza party in polls.

"The Hungarian side will definitely try to present its role as an important one, bridging the gap between the two significantly different sides," said Marcin Przydacz, foreign policy adviser to the Polish president.

Analysts say domestic issues will determine the outcome of the election, but the summit could help Orbán reinforce his argument that maintaining ties with Russia is necessary to end the war.

"If there is an agreement, that will legitimise his narrative about peace retrospectively," said Zoltán Novák, an analyst at the Centre for Fair Political Analysis.

Background:

• Trump spoke with Putin on 16 October for the first time in nearly two months. Following the conversation, he announced plans for a meeting in Budapest, which would be Putin's first appearance in an EU capital since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The visit would require Russian aircraft to cross the airspace of other EU member states.
• Trump said after the call that Putin did not like the idea of the US providing Ukraine with Tomahawk missiles, adding that he believes that now "it may not be perfect timing" to impose secondary sanctions aimed at reducing Russia's energy revenues.

Support Ukrainska Pravda on Patreon!