Neither Donald Trump nor Vladimir Putin have named exact dates for their summit, the Kremlin said Tuesday, throwing a big question mark over the proposed US-Russia summit in Budapest.
Trump said last week that he planned to meet Putin in the Hungarian capital as part of his efforts to broker an end to the war in Ukraine.
“Both the USA and Russia said that careful preparation was needed and that requires time,” the Kremlin said, as reported by Reuters.
“You cannot postpone what was not scheduled,” the Kremlin added.
The statement from Moscow came on the back of Poland warning Putin against travelling through its airspace for the summit in Hungary with Trump.
Poland said it could be forced to execute an international arrest warrant if Putin flew over its airspace. Nato member Poland has been among Kyiv's staunchest supporters following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The International Criminal Court, based in The Hague, issued an arrest warrant against Putin in 2023, accusing him of the war crime of illegally deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine. Russia does not recognise the ICC's jurisdiction and denies the allegations.
"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," Poland's foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski told Radio Rodzina.
The ICC warrant obligates the court's member states to arrest Putin, if he sets foot on their territory.
"I think the Russian side is aware of this. And, therefore, if this summit is to take place, hopefully with the participation of the victim of the aggression, the aircraft will use a different route," Sikorski said.
Hungary, whose Prime Minister Viktor Orban maintains warm relations with Russia, has said it would ensure that Putin can enter the country for the summit and return home afterwards.
To avoid travelling over Ukraine, however, the Russian delegation would need to fly through the airspace of at least one European Union nation. All EU countries are members of the ICC, though Hungary is in the process of leaving the court.
Exploding parcels plot
Poland and Romania detained eight people suspected of planning sabotage on behalf of Russia, authorities in Warsaw said on Tuesday, with three arrests concerning an alleged new plan to send exploding parcels, this time to Ukraine.
European officials have previously blamed Russia for detonations of parcels carried by DHL and DPD in Europe in 2024, in what security services said was part of a test run for a Russian plot to trigger explosions on cargo flights to the US.
Russia has denied any such plans.
Poland says it has been targeted with tactics such as arson and cyberattacks in a "hybrid war" waged by Russia to destabilise nations that support Kyiv in the Russian war in Ukraine. Moscow has denied such accusations.
"Preliminary information indicates that they created a route of some kind to send explosives through Poland and Romania to Ukraine," Jacek Dobrzynski, spokesman for the Special Services Coordinator, told reporters.
"One of them, a 21-year-old Ukrainian, was detained here in Poland near Warsaw. His colleagues, who were traveling to Romania, were detained by the Romanian special services in Bucharest."
There was no immediate comment from Romanian authorities.
The Polish National Prosecutor's Office said that the shipments of parcels were intercepted by Romania before they did any harm.
The prosecutor's office said the shipments were supposed to spontaneously combust or explode during transport, and the aim of the planned actions was to intimidate the population and destabilise European Union countries supporting Ukraine.
Dobrzynski also said that in recent months the Internal Security Agency has detained a total of 55 people who acted to the detriment of Poland and on behalf of Russian intelligence.