Putin has no need to fear ICC arrest warrant in Budapest, Orbán has already demonstrated that

US President Donald Trump announced on Thursday that sometime in the next two weeks he will be meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Budapest to discuss peace in Ukraine. The Hungarian capital has previously been mentioned several times as a possible venue for a meeting between the two heads of state, and in an interview with a French television channel back in June, Viktor Orbán indicated that “if he wants to come to Hungary, we will welcome the Russian president with respect.”

In addition to the political reasons behind the choice of location, a statement made two years ago by Gergely Gulyás, Minister of the Prime Minister's Office, may also have played a role. At that time, he said:

“Putin would not be arrested in Hungary.”

The Russian President is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC), which issued an arrest warrant for him in March 2023. According to the body, Vladimir Putin bears direct and personal responsibility for crimes committed by Russian forces or groups associated with them in Ukraine. The arrest warrant specifically identified the forced deportation of civilians, including children, and their forced transfer to Russia as crimes.

He will not be the first head of state to visit Budapest despite there being an arrest warrant for him. In the spring, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu paid a visit to Hungary which lasted several days. There is an international arrest warrant in place against the Israeli Prime Minister for war crimes as well, but the Orbán government indicated last November that they would ignore it, even though this constitutes a violation of international law.

Then, once the government's actions made it clear that they would indeed ignore the international arrest warrant, coinciding with Netanyahu's visit, they initiated Hungary's withdrawal from the International Criminal Court, which has since been approved by Parliament, and the UN Secretary-General was notified about it in June. The withdrawal will become effective one year later.

For the duration of the planned summit, Budapest will take center stage in global politics, but the question is what Trump and Putin's talks will bring in terms of resolving the war Russia has been waging against Ukraine, especially in terms of peace or even just a ceasefire, given that the two leaders' August meeting in Alaska proved fruitless and only served to encourage the Russian president to intensify the attacks against Ukraine. For Viktor Orbán, however, hosting such a high-level meeting between the two presidents is certainly a matter of great prestige.

Wanted for the abduction of children

Tens of thousands of children have been taken from Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine to areas within Russia's internationally recognized borders. This has been acknowledged by the Russian leadership as well, with the Russian Ministry of Defense reporting in August 2022 that nearly 3.5 million people, including half a million children, had been "rescued" from the conflict zone. According to a joint report published this September by Save Ukraine and War Child UK, more than half of the Ukrainian children abducted by Russia have been subjected to attempts at re-education, and many have reported having experienced torture and sexual abuse.

Telex also met with Ukrainian parents who had sent their children to summer camps in Russia during the Russian occupation, after which the territory was returned to Ukrainian control. At the time, the parents had been trying for several weeks – unsuccessfully – to get their children back from Russia.

According to the ICC, there are reasonable grounds to believe that all this happened with the knowledge of the Russian president, but he is also considered responsible for failing to guarantee control over the groups which committed these crimes, given that they had entered Ukraine as a result of the war launched by Putin. In addition to the Russian president, the ICC arrest warrant also names the Russian Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Maria Lvov-Belova.

He doesn’t need to worry about being handcuffed, but things have become uncomfortable for him

Vladimir Putin has no reason to worry about being handcuffed and put in the dock – but the arrest warrant has still had measurable consequences for the Russian president.

The ICC was established in 2002 under the 1998 Rome Statute. It is only accountable to the countries that have ratified the document, of which there are currently 125 around the world. Russia, the United States, and China have not ratified the statute. At a glance, the arrest warrant may thus seem only symbolic, as Russia does not recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC – meaning that enforcing the arrest warrant in Russia, either legally or practically is not possible.

More importantly, however, Putin's trips abroad have become legally uncertain, since the arrest warrant is enforceable in countries that have signed the Rome Statute and thus consider the ICC's jurisdiction to be valid. This could already be seen in practice in August 2023, when – partly due to this reason – Putin decided to skip the BRICS summit in South Africa, as well as this summer, when he was forced to stay away from BRICS meetings in Brazil and South Africa specifically because of the arrest warrant.

At the same time, he was received with a red carpet in Mongolia last year, despite the country being a member of the International Criminal Court. Indeed, the Russian president has been well aware from the outset that he would receive a similar welcome in Hungary if he ever decided to travel here, as just a few days after the arrest warrant had been issued, the Hungarian government made it clear that they would not have him arrested.

He needn't worry about coming here

At a government briefing held shortly after the arrest warrant for Putin was issued in 2023, Gergely Gulyás said that if Putin were to visit Hungary, it would not be possible to arrest him despite the arrest warrant.

He argued that they could not detain the Russian president because the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court had not been promulgated in Hungary. According to him, the reason why this did not happen was because the statute is contrary to the Hungarian constitution.

The basis for the conflict is that, according to the Rome Statute and the ICC's position, the immunity of heads of state does not provide protection against ICC arrest warrants, while the Hungarian constitution clearly stipulates the immunity of the president of the republic, which is contrary to the Rome Statute.

However, the Minister of the Prime Minister's Office was not precise in his statement. Tamás Hoffmann, a researcher at the Institute of Legal Studies of the Centre for Social Sciences and a lecturer at Corvinus University, told Telex at the time that Hungary could only disregard the ICC's decision by violating its international obligations.

"Hungary is a party to the Rome Statute, the arrest warrant is valid on its territory, so Hungarian law enforcement authorities would be obliged to execute it," the international lawyer said. He said that the fact that Hungary has signed and ratified the Rome Statute, which allowed the ICC to come into being, already indicates that Hungary, as a party to the ICC, is taking on its obligations. “The failure to promulgate it would not prevent the execution of the arrest warrant in a specific case.”

They proved their point with Netanyahu

This spring, the Hungarian government demonstrated in practice that it would ignore the international arrest warrant when it did not arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his multi-day visit to Budapest.

The ICC had issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, along with several leaders of Hamas who had already been killed by then.

According to the ICC, there are reasonable grounds for suspecting that Netanyahu may have committed crimes against humanity. The court cited using the starvation of the civilian population in Gaza as a form of warfare, but he is also suspected of murder, persecution, and other acts of inhumanity.

Viktor Orbán announced that he was inviting the Israeli Prime Minister to Budapest the very next day after the warrant against Netanyahu had been issued. The Hungarian Prime Minister described the ICC's decision as cynical, saying that it had interfered in an ongoing conflict for political purposes. "There is no other choice here but to oppose this decision," he said.

While in Putin's case the Hungarian government presented legal arguments and did not comment on the decision from a political standpoint,

in Netanyahu's case, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó also spoke up, calling the arrest warrant absurd and shameful. Thus, it was not primarily rejected on legal grounds, but specifically on moral grounds.

Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in Budapest on Wednesday, April 3, and Gergely Gulyás announced that same day that the Hungarian government had decided to withdraw from the International Criminal Court. The minister heading the Prime Minister's Office justified the decision by saying that although the ICC was "a respectable initiative," it had lately become a political body, which the government found unacceptable. Under international law, the government's move will take effect a year after the procedure has been launched and until then, the country remains a member of the ICC and has the same rights and obligations as all other members.

However, the Hungarian government didn't take on too great a risk either by welcoming Netanyahu or now, by preparing to welcome Putin. In such cases, the ICC can initiate proceedings, declare a breach of obligations, and condemn the country in question for having violated its commitment. We've seen a similar example before: most recently last fall with Mongolia, when the Russian president visited the country and, of course, was not arrested.

This is also what ended up happening in Hungary's case with Netanyahu. The ICC launched proceedings in mid-April and at the end of July it was concluded that Hungary had breached its obligations.

There aren't many direct legal consequences to the Hungarian government ignoring the ICC's decision, but indirectly, it could serve as further evidence of Hungary's shortcomings in terms of the rule of law and could also have an impact on the ongoing EU infringement proceedings against Hungary, which play a key role in determining whether Hungary will have access to the EU funds it is entitled to as a member state, which are currently frozen, Tamás Hoffmann told Telex prior to Netanyahu's arrival.

Hungary is the only EU member state that will no longer be a member of the ICC once its withdrawal takes effect.