World News

Bulgaria may allow Putin overflight to Trump meeting in Budapest

Oct 21, 2025

Moscow [Russia], October 21: Russian President Vladimir Putin's plane could be granted overflight rights over Bulgaria to hold a meeting with US President Donald Trump in Budapest, according to comments by Foreign Minister Georg Georgiev reported by state radio on Monday. "If efforts to achieve peace are made, if the condition for this is that there will be a meeting, then the most logical thing is that a meeting of this kind is facilitated in an achievable way," Georgiev said, according to the report. Georgiev was speaking on the sidelines of a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg One possible flightpath from Moscow to Budapest lies over the Black Sea, Bulgaria and Serbia, but Bulgarian airspace has been closed to Russian aircraft since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Other routes lie to the north - over Belarus and Poland or over the Baltic Sea, Germany and the Czech Republic. On Thursday, Trump posted on Truth Social that high-level advisors would meet to arrange a meeting with Putin. "President Putin and I will then meet in an agreed upon location, Budapest, Hungary, to see if we can bring this 'inglorious' War, between Russia and Ukraine, to an end," he added. (DPA