Budapest as a potential meeting place for Zelenskyy and Putin: advantages and risks

Budapest as a potential meeting place for Zelenskyy and Putin: advantages and risks

In recent days, numerous speculations have emerged about where a meeting between Zelenskyy and Putin might take place, if it happens at all.

Locations such as Switzerland, Rome, and Vienna have been mentioned. However, recently, Budapest has been increasingly discussed. According to media reports, this is where Washington would like to organize the meeting and is already making preparations on the ground.

The logic behind choosing Budapest seems clear. Hungary is a country friendly to Russia, but at the same time, it is a member of the EU and NATO, meaning it is, in a way, also part of the West.

This is not the most convenient location for Zelenskyy, as, firstly, it brings to mind the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, and secondly, relations with Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán have been extremely tense for Kyiv in recent times.

However, if Trump insists, Zelenskyy is unlikely to refuse a meeting in Budapest.

But there are questions regarding Putin. The issue is that Russia and Hungary do not share a common border. Getting there from Moscow is only possible through the airspace of NATO countries. The shortest route is through Poland. Alternatively, one could bypass Ukraine from the south and fly through Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, or Greece.

Even if these countries, at the request of the US, grant permission for the presidential plane to fly over, the Kremlin might seriously doubt the reliability of their security guarantees. This applies both on the way to the meeting place and on the return journey (especially if the talks do not yield success).

By the way, many experts explained the choice of Alaska for a Trump-Putin meeting by the fact that Russia and the US share a border there, eliminating the risk of flying over foreign states.

If the same logic is applied to choosing a location for a Zelenskyy-Putin meeting, the country should not be hostile to Russia and should share a border with it.

There are only a few such countries: Belarus, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and China. Or, once again, Alaska.

However, as before, the question of whether such a meeting will take place at all remains open.