Illustration (AI-generated)
President Donald Trump said Sunday he expects to sit down with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin together at next week’s Asia-Pacific summit in China, with denuclearization and the Iran war on the table.
Trump told reporters before flying back to Washington from Florida that he will travel to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, set for Nov. 18 and 19 in the southern Chinese tech hub of Shenzhen, Reuters reported.
“One of the meetings, I think, will be with President Putin and President Xi, and that’ll be interesting,” Trump said. “We’re talking a lot of things, including denuclearization, but we’ll be talking a lot of things. We’re trying to end the war in Iran.”
Beijing did not rule it out. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said Monday that China was “in communication with relevant parties” about a meeting of the three presidents, The Hindu reported.
The Kremlin said on Oct. 21 that a first-of-its-kind trilateral meeting was “being prepared,” Euronews reported. Such a meeting among the leaders of the three nuclear powers would be historic.
Trump said in October he was open to three-way arms control talks with Xi and Putin focused on denuclearization. Putin has reportedly pitched using a trilateral meeting to discuss ending Russia’s war in Ukraine, Reuters noted.
Trump also told CBS’ “60 Minutes” in an interview aired Sunday, “I believe we’re very close to making a deal” to end that war, one that would leave a “little bit different shape Ukraine.” He offered no specifics.
The summit would bring Trump and Xi together for the third time this year, after Trump’s visit to Beijing in May and Xi’s trip to Washington in September, The Hindu reported. The two are expected to meet again at the G20 in Miami at year’s end.
The meetings come as a fragile U.S.-China trade truce is set to expire in January, Euronews noted.
Analysts were skeptical a three-way session would produce much. “I think it will happen. The question is the format and the content,” said Sun Yun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center. “China wants the image but not the costs.”
Danny Russel, a former senior State Department official in the Obama administration, said, “Putin has the most to gain from a leaders’ trilateral, and the Russians are clearly behind the push for a meeting, which would be a diplomatic coup.”
Craig Singleton, senior director of the China program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, warned that such photo opportunities “have diminishing diplomatic returns.” He added, “The spectacle may be historic without producing anything particularly consequential.”
Chinese analysts also played down expectations. Su Liuqiang, a scholar at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, told state media that Russia was the “most enthusiastic” of the three and that an informal exchange was more likely than a structured summit, The Hindu reported.
Su cited strong anti-Russia sentiment in the U.S. and Europe and the three countries’ differing priorities. “In this context, a low-profile trilateral meeting is the more realistic option,” he said.
No format or agenda has been announced, and the White House has not confirmed a three-way meeting beyond the president’s remarks.
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