The White House confirmed on Wednesday that Donald Trump could meet Vladimir Putin to try to broker an end to the Russian war on Ukraine as soon as next week, but finding a neutral venue to host the summit might not be easy, given that the Russian president was indicted for war crimes in 2023 by the international criminal court, and so is subject to arrest in 125 countries.
That rules out Helsinki, where Trump and Putin met in 2018, since Finland is one of the 125 state parties to the Rome statute authorizing the ICC, and so would be obliged to act on the court’s arrest warrant should Putin visit. Switzerland, Austria, Iceland, Malta, France, Spain and the United Kingdom, which all hosted cold war era summits between American and Soviet leaders, are also out, for the same reason.
Potsdam, where Truman met Stalin in 1945, is also impossible, since Germany is also a signatory to the ICC treaty.
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