China to host first-ever Trump–Xi–Putin trilateral meeting in Shenzhen next week
The White House confirmed on Friday that Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping will hold the first-ever three-way meeting of the leaders of the United States, Russia and China. It will take place on Thursday on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. Spokeswoman Olivia Wales said Trump will, among other topics, discuss reducing nuclear weapons, which he considers a dangerous proliferation.
US officials said Trump also intends to raise the war in Iran. By contrast, Russia's war in Ukraine is not expected to come up. A senior official said Washington is running a "whole other track" of negotiations with Kyiv and Moscow, following recent talks between US envoys and both Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Because China is not part of that track, the official said, it does not seem appropriate to discuss Ukraine in Shenzhen.
Zelensky has warned that the meeting could resemble the 1945 Yalta summit, where Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin sketched the post-WWII settlement in Europe, and could amount to a 21st-century "redistribution of spheres of influence."
Trump will also hold a bilateral working lunch and meeting with Xi on Thursday, their fourth meeting since his return to power last year. No separate one-on-one with Putin is planned. Officials said the resignation of Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang over an affair with an alleged Chinese spy, and US chip export controls, are not expected to feature in the talks with Xi. Elon Musk will travel with Trump but will not join the trilateral meeting. Trump leaves Washington on Monday and stops in the Philippines on Tuesday for an ASEAN summit before heading to Shenzhen.
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