Category World News

Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, will travel to Hungary in the near future to meet with Donald Trump, the US’s ambassador, for a second summit on ending the Ukrainian conflict. The first, which occurred in Alaska in August, failed to lead to any agreement.

How will the fugitive from justice make it to the bargaining table given that a 2023 International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant was issued for Putin’s arrest over the alleged illegal deportation of Ukrainian children during Russia’s conflict with Ukraine?

The Hague-based court established by the 1998 Rome Statute in 2002 must detain those who are subject to warrants as soon as they enter their country, which theoretically includes airspace, which is also regarded as sovereign territory under international law.

Countries would be bound by the agreement, including Hungary, which recently announced its intention to leave. This would make it a safe haven for Putin.

However, the ICC, which has 125 member states, has no means of imposing arrests.

What awaits Putin on his upcoming travels, then?

Isn’t Hungary a member of the ICC as well?

On paper, the answer is yes. However, it is leaving.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the country in April when right-wing populist Prime Minister Viktor Orban announced the country would abandon the ICC’s founding document. In addition to his arrest warrant, which was issued earlier this year, Netanyahu is also listed as one of the most wanted by the ICC for his involvement in the war crimes committed in Gaza.

The withdrawal process begins one year after the United Nations Secretary-General receives a written notification of the decision after the Hungarian parliament approved a bill back in May.

Putin appears safe from arrest on Hungarian soil given Peter Szijjarto’s comments on the “sovereign” nation’s intentions to host the president with “respect” and ensure he has “successful negotiations, and then returns home” on Friday.

How about the atmosphere? He might be intercepted in midair, right?

“Many questions must be solved before Putin embarks on his journey,” according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Friday. The president’s flight path is likely to be the subject of one of those inquiries.

Following recent Russian jet infiltrations of Estonia’s airspace, which has put the region on high alert for a potential overspill from the Ukraine war, Putin will likely want to stay away from the Baltic states. A hard landing could be made by the Baltics.

Poland, which has historically had strained relations with the Kremlin, and which is friendly Belarus might offer a convenient corridor between the Baltics and Ukraine further south. This would set the president on course for this and warn Europe of a “deep” Russian strike on its territory. Recently, Russian drones have also entered Polish airspace.

Russia’s populist Robert Fico, who is in charge of Slovakia, continues to guzzle Russian energy in defiance of Trump’s orders to stop imports of oil and gas, and may be more accommodating. In fact, Fico and other EU members are engaged in conflict due to sanctions against Moscow. However, before reaching Slovakia, Putin would need to cross Poland first.

Therefore, Putin’s direct route to Budapest appears to be riddled with obstacles.

What about a route that is more congested?

Netanyahu, a fellow ICC fugitive wanted for crimes including using starvation as a weapon of war against Palestinian civilians in Gaza, who traveled to several European nations last month to attend the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in New York. Putin may have inspired him.

According to FlightRadar24, the Wing of Zion plane of the Israeli Prime Minister briefly flew over Greek and Italian territory before veering off into the Atlantic.

Putin might consider taking a southbound flight. Georgia is a signatory to the Rome Statute but has the potential to turn a blind eye when its ruling party, the Georgian Dream, suspends Tbilisi’s application to join the EU.

And Turkiye, which is not party to the Rome Statute but has long hosted negotiations between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators and has treaded a tightrope, might be able to persuade the Russian president to step down.

Greece would serve as the main barrier from there, opening a way for Orban’s warm welcome through the Balkan states.

Has Putin traveled extensively since he was a war criminal wanted on international grounds?

Since the ICC warrant was issued, Putin has clearly restricted his travels.

He rode his horseback through Mongolia last year and was treated to a lavish ceremony with Mongolian President Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh.

Russia and Mongolia depend on one another for fuel and electricity, but they have very friendly relations. It was surprising to see the red carpet being drawn out because the nation has abstained during UN votes on the conflict and has abstained from condemning Russia’s offensive in Ukraine.

Since Trump was able to fly directly to Alaska for a bilateral with him in August, he was able to fly over his nation’s enormous landmass over the Bering Strait to the US, which is not a signatory of the Rome Statute.

Since China is not a member of the ICC, the “old friend” and neighbor Xi Jinping’s annual parade and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit presented no issues this year.

The Russian president met with leaders from Central Asia this month, and he wants to strengthen ties with Tajikistan, which has ratified the Rome Statute.

Putin: When will he be detained?

Although it is nearly inconceivable to capture Russia’s president, the arrest warrants represent the first step toward a trial.

Only a select few foreign leaders have visited The Hague.

Rodrigo Duterte, the ex-president of the Philippines, turned himself in earlier this year to face crimes against humanity. The charges relate to extrajudicial killings committed during his infamous “war on drugs,” which resulted in the deaths of countless others.

Charles Taylor, a former leader of Liberia and a warlord, was found guilty in 2012 by the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone, which held trial in The Hague. He was found guilty of 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Would a future Russian leader choose to forcibly hand Putin over for crimes against humanity committed during the former Yugoslavian wars, as happened with Slobodan Milosevic, who was removed in 2000 after being excommunicated from Serbia?

Former United States National Security Adviser John Bolton has pleaded not guilty to federal charges over his handling of classified information.

On Friday, Bolton surrendered to authorities at the federal courthouse in Greenbelt, Maryland, where he also delivered his plea.

He faces eight counts of transmitting national defence information and 10 counts of unlawfully retaining such information, each with the potential for 10 years in prison. If found guilty, he could spend the rest of his life in prison.

Bolton has served under four Republican presidents: He was an assistant attorney general under Ronald Reagan, a diplomat under George HW Bush, an ambassador to the United Nations under George W Bush and a national security adviser for Donald Trump.

But it is his relationship with Trump that has raised concerns that his prosecution could be politically motivated.

Questions of retaliation

Bolton’s indictment is the third in a series of charges unveiled against prominent Trump critics since the president replaced the US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia with one of his personal lawyers, Lindsey Halligan.

Since she was sworn in on September 22, Halligan has pursued criminal indictments against James Comey, a former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and Letitia James, New York state’s attorney general.

In all three cases, Trump has a long and public history of acrimony with the defendants.

Comey, for example, led the FBI during its investigation of alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, a probe Trump considered a smear attempt. The president ultimately fired Comey early in his first term, in 2017.

James, meanwhile, successfully led a civil fraud case alleging that Trump and his associates at the Trump Organization inflated their assets to secure advantageous financing. In 2024, a court ordered Trump to pay $364m in damages, a sum that was later thrown out as “excessive”.

Trump named both James and Comey in a social media post explicitly calling on the Department of Justice to prosecute his political rivals last month.

“They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done,” Trump wrote in the post, directed at Attorney General Pam Bondi.

The post proceeded to assert that Trump had fired the previous US attorney in Virginia for telling him they “had no case”.

“We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility,” he continued. “They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!) OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”

Bolton’s ties with Trump

Bolton, who was not named in the post, has nevertheless had his own long-running feud with the Republican leader.

Known for his hawkish foreign policy, advocating for aggressive US action in countries like Iran, Bolton served in Trump’s first administration for just over a year, from 2018 to 2019. Bolton was the third national security adviser Trump had appointed in less than two years.

It is unclear whether Bolton was ultimately fired from his role, as Trump has claimed, or if he resigned, as Bolton himself maintains.

But Trump had clashed with Bolton over the latter’s hardline positions, a fact he has brought up in public comments.

“If I listened to him, we would be in World War Six by now,” Trump wrote in a post to Twitter, the platform currently known as X.

Bolton himself unloaded on Trump in a 2020 memoir about his time in the White House, called The Room Where It Happened. The book accused Trump of making policy decisions based on self-interest and showing a lack of awareness about global affairs.

Bolton even suggested Trump had petitioned China to boost his re-election prospects.

“He couldn’t tell the difference between his personal interests and the country’s interests,” Bolton wrote at one point.

The former national security adviser has also made numerous appearances on cable news channels, serving as a critic of Trump and his policies.

On Thursday, in an Oval Office meeting with reporters, Trump denied knowing about the charges against Bolton, though he did take another jab his former adviser.

“ I didn’t know that. You’re telling me for the first time,” Trump told a reporter who asked about Thursday’s indictment. “Yeah, he’s a bad guy. It’s too bad. But that’s the way it goes.”

Inside the indictment

When Trump returned to office for a second term in January, Bolton was among the first former officials to face backlash from the incoming administration.

On January 21, a day after his inauguration, Trump stripped Bolton of his security detail, a decision Bolton criticised, given the assassination attempt he allegedly faced from Iranian forces.

“I am disappointed but not surprised,” Bolton wrote on social media at the time. “The Justice Department filed criminal charges against an Iranian Revolutionary Guard official in 2022 for attempting to hire a hit man to target me. That threat remains today.”

Then, in August, FBI officials raided Bolton’s home in Bethesda, Maryland, leaving with computer drives and several boxes of material.

The 26-page criminal indictment, released on Thursday, marks an escalation from that investigation.

Bolton, it says, “abused his position as National Security Advisor by sharing more than a thousand pages of information about his day-to-day activities as National Security Advisor — including information relating to the national defense which was classified up to the TOP SECRET/SCI level — with two unauthorized individuals”.

It also accuses Bolton of having “unlawfully retained documents, writings, and notes relating to national defense”.

Some of those writings, the indictment explains, were “diary-like entries” that were initially handwritten and later transcribed and sent to the two recipients electronically.

Those recipients have been reported in US media to be relatives, possibly Bolton’s wife and daughter.

The indictment adds that, after Bolton left office, he was targeted by a “cyber actor believed to be associated with the Islamic Republic”. That, in turn, may have granted the hacker access to the classified materials Bolton had.

Critics have pointed out that Trump himself had been indicted in a classified documents case, with an investigation retrieving some 33 boxes and 11,000 records from the Republican leader’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

Federal prosecutors had alleged that Trump attempted to conceal those documents in case that was dropped shortly before his second term. It is Justice Department policy not to prosecute a sitting president.

Since taking office, Trump officials, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, have likewise come under fire for sharing sensitive military information over the messaging app Signal — information that was accidentally shared with a journalist.

Bolton had criticised the Signal app leak publicly, appearing in US media to blast the Trump officials’ conduct. Those words were used in Thursday’s indictment as evidence that Bolton was aware of the security procedures necessary to handle sensitive information.

“I couldn’t find a way to express how stunned I was that anybody would do this,” Bolton is quoted as saying. “You simply don’t use commercial means of communication, whether it’s supposedly an encrypted app or not, for these kinds of discussions.”

Bolton has denied the charges against him. Instead, he has characterised the recent string of indictments an effort by Trump to “intimidate his opponents”.

“I have become the latest target in weaponising the Justice Department to charge those he deems to be his enemies with charges that were declined before or distort the facts,” Bolton said in a statement.

Trucks loaded with humanitarian aid were seen moving through Gaza’s Khan Younis on Friday. The UN says although aid deliveries have increased since the ceasefire, convoys struggle to reach northern areas of the strip because of war-damaged roads and continued closures.