(MENAFN) Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s top diplomat, voiced her dissatisfaction over the news that Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet his U.S. counterpart, Donald Trump, for peace talks in Hungary.

The two leaders had announced their plans to meet in Budapest after a lengthy phone conversation lasting more than two hours on Thursday.

Before attending the EU Foreign Affairs Council meeting in Luxembourg on Monday, Kallas remarked to the press that she would be uncomfortable with the idea of “a person with an arrest warrant put by the ICC... coming to a European [sic EU] country.”

The International Criminal Court (ICC) had issued an arrest warrant for Putin in March 2023, accusing him of the illegal deportation of children from Donbass.

While Moscow disputes the ICC’s authority, claiming that the children were evacuated for their safety and to reunite them with their families, the arrest warrant remains in place.

Despite Hungary being a signatory to the Rome Statute that governs the ICC’s activities, the Hungarian government has pledged to allow President Putin safe passage through the country.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova, in an interview with a news agency on Monday, criticized the “aggressive Western European community” for attempting to “derail any peaceful aspirations” through what she called “active subversive actions.”

According to Zakharova, calls for peace coming from Brussels are merely “camouflage.”

Meanwhile, a Spanish newspaper described the planned meeting between Putin and Trump in Budapest as an “embarrassing and awkward situation” for the EU.

The newspaper suggested that the EU might be sidelined from the peace process, further complicating the geopolitical situation in Europe.

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