Zelenskyy ready to join Trump-Putin meeting
19 October 20:17
On the evening of October 16, the day before Zelenskyy’s visit to the United States, Trump had a two-hour phone conversation with Putin. After the call, he said he had agreed to meet with the Russian president in Budapest. This meeting is scheduled to take place at a meeting of the US and Russian delegations next week.
The next day, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said that the Kremlin leader would not face arrest under an International Criminal Court warrant during his visit to Budapest.
“We respectfully welcome President Vladimir Putin and, of course, we will ensure his arrival in Hungary, successful negotiations here and his subsequent return home. There is no need for any coordination with anyone,” Szijjarto said, calling the upcoming event the “Budapest Summit.”
Meanwhile, European Commission spokesperson Anita Hipper said that despite the current sanctions against Russia and the frozen assets of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, Putin is “not actually” banned from entering the EU.
“The meeting is not confirmed, and we will not comment on hypotheticals, but there are no entry bans as such,” Hipper said, noting that the same applies to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
