Poland issues Putin arrest warning ahead of Trump meeting

Poland cannot guarantee Russian President Vladimir Putin’s plane would not be forced to land on its territory en route to a future meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump, Warsaw’s foreign minister has said.

“I cannot guarantee that an independent Polish court won’t order the government to escort such an aircraft down to hand the suspect to the court in The Hague,” Radosław Sikorski told Polish broadcaster Radio Rodzina on Tuesday, according to national media.

Trump said last week he would meet Putin in the Hungarian capital, Budapest, following a phone conversation between the two leaders and a White House meeting with Ukraine’s leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, that yielded few positive results for Kyiv.

The Netherlands-based International Criminal Court in 2023 issued an arrest warrant for Putin, accusing the Kremlin chief of illegally deporting hundreds of Ukrainian children from the war-torn country. The ICC also issued an arrest warrant for Maria Lvova-Belova, the Russian presidential commissioner for children’s rights. 

This is a breaking story and will be updated shortly.