US President Donald Trump, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian leader Vladimir Putin are scheduled to hold their first three-way meeting next week in China, the White House has confirmed. The talks will take place alongside the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen, a Chinese technology hub.
The announcement, confirmed by the White House assistant press secretary, comes nine months after the expiry of the last nuclear arms treaty between Washington and Moscow. Its lapse left the two countries with the world’s largest nuclear arsenals without caps for the first time in more than half a century.
Trump has presented the meeting as an opportunity to reach an agreement involving all three countries’ nuclear stockpiles. The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, known as New START, expired in February. At that point, Trump rejected a Russian proposal to extend the treaty for one year, instead calling for a replacement agreement that would also include China.
A senior Trump administration official nevertheless cautioned against expecting a deal from the Shenzhen talks. “We do not expect to get to any kind of agreement,” the official told Reuters, characterising the meeting as the beginning of a conversation. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Russia has the largest number of nuclear warheads, followed by the United States and China.
The Iran war is also on Trump’s planned agenda, a senior US official told reporters on condition of anonymity. The official said Trump would avoid discussing Russia’s war in Ukraine. Elon Musk will accompany Trump on the China trip but will not participate in the three-way meeting, and Trump is not expected to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during his Asia visit.
The planned gathering has prompted comparisons with the 1945 Yalta Conference, when the leaders of the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union helped shape the post-war order. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected that comparison, saying agreements reached in Shenzhen could not be imposed on other countries. He nevertheless described the meeting as “extremely significant”.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has expressed concern that the summit could provide a setting for discussions about a Ukraine agreement without Kyiv’s involvement. Trump has sought closer relations with both Xi and Putin despite a brief trade war with China last year and Russia’s continuing war in Ukraine, where Washington is trying to mediate a resolution.
