In a stark escalation of geopolitical brinkmanship, Poland’s Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski has issued a blistering ultimatum to Russian President Vladimir Putin: steer clear of Polish airspace en route to any prospective summit in Hungary with US President Donald Trump, or risk having his presidential jet forcibly grounded and himself hauled off to The Hague for arrest.
The audacious warning, delivered in a radio interview on Tuesday, underscores the razor-thin fault lines in Europe’s fragile post-war diplomacy, where legal niceties collide with high-stakes realpolitik.
Sikorski’s remarks stem from Trump’s recent overture — floated last week during a Mar-a-Lago address — proposing a Budapest rendezvous to hammer out an end to Russia’s grinding invasion of Ukraine, now in its fourth year. While Moscow has yet to confirm it, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a vocal Kremlin sympathiser often at odds with Brussels, swiftly pledged safe passage and an unhindered return for Putin, framing it as a “pragmatic olive branch for peace.” Orbán’s outlier stance within the EU has long irked Warsaw, which sees Hungary’s tilt towards Russia as a betrayal of collective solidarity against aggression, despite his veto of multiple sanctions packages.
At the heart of Sikorski’s threat lies the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) March 2023 arrest warrant against Putin, accusing him of war crimes for the systematic deportation of hundreds of Ukrainian children to Russia — a charge the Kremlin dismisses as “politically motivated fiction” while rejecting the ICC’s jurisdiction outright.
As an ICC signatory, Poland is legally bound to enforce it. “I expect that an independent Polish court could order the government to escort such an aircraft down to hand the suspect over to The Hague,” Sikorski told Radio Rodzina, his tone a blend of judicial detachment and steely resolve. He urged summit planners to chart an alternative route, perhaps skirting Poland via the Adriatic over Montenegro and Serbia, to avert a mid-air fiasco that could torpedo fragile talks.
The salvo has reverberated across capitals. Bulgaria’s foreign minister, Georgi Georgiev, countered with an offer to open Sofia’s skies for Putin’s flight, deeming it “logical” to facilitate peace efforts involving Ukraine, the “victim of aggression.” Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov fired back, branding Sikorski’s words a tacit admission of Polish “terrorist intent”, while far-right voices in Warsaw decried it as reckless sabre-rattling. Critics, including EU diplomats, fret that such provocations could derail Trump’s touted mediation — envisioned as a sequel to his Alaska parley with Putin — exacerbating divisions in a NATO eastern flank already jittery from drone incursions and hybrid threats.
As Putin weighs his itinerary, Sikorski’s gambit lays bare the ICC warrant’s long shadow: a potent symbol of accountability, yet a diplomatic landmine. Will it force a detour or ignite a fresh crisis? In the chessboard of Central Europe, one wrong move could upend the board.