Putin’s Flight Can the Kremlin travel through EU airspace to Budapest?

The summit has not yet been confirmed, but if Russian President Vladimir Putin travels to Budapest to meet US President Trump in the next two weeks, he will have to overcome several obstacles first.

When President Putin visited Alaska for the Anchorage summit last August, the United States granted special permission for the presidential plane. The airliner is a modified Ilyushin Il-96 airliner called the “Flying Kremlin”, equipped with four engines and a defense system.

Russian planes are banned from US and EU airspace. So if President Putin were to fly to Budapest, he would need a special dispensation if he decided to fly over an EU member state.

It’s perfectly possible, but landlocked Hungary is not the easiest destination for a Russian president who has rarely set foot abroad and has not visited the EU in years.

“Of course, at the moment we are not sure,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. “What we have is the willingness of the presidents to hold those meetings.”

Days after President Putin ordered Russia to invade Ukraine in February 2022, the European Union froze the assets of its leader and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

A complete ban was also imposed on all Russian aircraft passing through the airspace of the 27 EU countries. Hungary and its neighbors are also NATO members.

President Putin was also indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on charges of war crimes for illegally transporting Ukrainian children to Russia.

So, although there are complex problems, Hungary believes that they can all be solved. Hungary is in the process of withdrawing from the ICC anyway.

Putin and Hungary’s Viktor Orban – perhaps his closest ally in the EU – have already discussed the planned summit by phone, with Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szizarto telling reporters: “We will, of course, ensure that President Putin can enter Hungary and have a successful meeting here and then return home.”

The EU will not create obstacles either.

The Executive Committee said it welcomes any meeting that advances “a just and lasting peace for Ukraine” and supports President Trump’s efforts to do so.

One of the key drivers of the latest proposed sanctions against Russia, the 19th package to date, is to bring Russia to the negotiating table, the report says. And they point out that there is no travel ban on President Putin, only an asset freeze.

The biggest obstacle is how the Russian leader will fly from Moscow to Budapest. Obviously he’s not going to buy an Air Serbia ticket to Belgrade and take the train to Hungary, which might be the most direct route.

He will want his Il-96 plane to ensure his safety, but this will probably mean obtaining permission to use the airspace of EU and NATO member states and to break the EU’s ban on Russian planes.

“Member states can make some exceptions when it comes to travel directions, but they will have to make these on an individual basis,” European Commission spokeswoman Anita Hipper said.

NATO has also referred the matter to national authorities and may turn a blind eye if Trump is involved.

Even if there is an agreement, a look at the map shows that Putin may have to take a circuitous route. Ukraine is not under consideration, and Poland is also not under consideration due to Moscow’s frosty relationship with Warsaw.

Perhaps the most direct route would be via the eastern Black Sea coast and Turkey through Bulgaria and Serbia or Romania to Hungary.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic knows President Putin well and Air Serbia operates direct flights to Moscow through EU airspace. Serbia is a candidate for EU membership but is not a member.

It is the EU countries that will have to agree, Bulgaria or perhaps Romania, who will have to escort Putin’s plane through their airspace.

Romania will be home to the largest NATO base in Europe, and Bulgaria is also building a NATO base in an effort to strengthen the defense alliance’s eastern flank.

A Bucharest spokesman told the BBC that the issue was only a subject of speculation at the moment and that “Romania has so far not received a request to fly into its airspace from the Russian Federation.”

The BBC has also requested comment from the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry.

If Putin wants to play it even safer, he could fly through Turkey, down the southern coast of Greece, through Montenegrin airspace, and then through Serbia. But the road is much longer.

Budapest is not the easiest place for Viktor Orbán, who has long enjoyed good relationships with both Putin and President Donald Trump, even if it works very well.

President Trump said on this day, “The leader we like is him, and I like him too.”

A high-profile international summit would do Orban no harm. That’s because Orban is trailing in opinion polls ahead of next spring’s elections.

Just hours after Budapest was chosen as the location, Orbán called Putin and declared on his Facebook page: “Preparations are in full swing!”

Orbán was quick to make clear that the EU has little time to support Ukraine and that Brussels has nothing to do with the talks.

“It is logical for the EU to be excluded from this peace process because it supports the war,” he told Hungarian radio on Friday.

European leaders will have different ideas when they meet him at a summit in Brussels next week.