Historic first summit among Trump, Xi, Putin will not focus on Ukraine, White House says
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U.S. President Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Chinese President Xi Jinping will hold their first-ever trilateral meeting on the sidelines of the upcoming APEC summit in Shenzhen, the White House confirmed on Nov. 13.
There has been widespread speculation as to the possibility of such a meeting since Trump and Putin announced their plans to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in China on Nov. 18-19. This will mark the first time the three world leaders have gathered for face-to-face talks.
The main topic of the meeting will be nuclear non-proliferation, a senior U.S. official told the Associated Press (AP) and other media outlets on Nov. 13.
Trump also plans to discuss the war in Iran — but not the war in Ukraine, the official said.
The statement, if accurate, may prove disappointing to Putin, who reportedly proposed the trilateral meeting in order to secure a peace deal more favorable to Russia, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Kyiv lambasted the proposal, with Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha saying the summit would only "encourage Putin to continue this war."
Trump, however, said he was prepared to meet Xi and Putin at the APEC summit to discuss arms control and denuclearization.
According to German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Xi has no interest in discussing Russia's war against Ukraine at the summit, believing that role should be played by Europe rather than China.
Still, the Kremlin has maintained that negotations on Ukraine will go forward at APEC — without representation from Ukraine or the Europeans. Speaking to Russian state media on Nov. 12, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov claimed that Trump and Putin would hold in-depth talks on a peace settlement in China.
"Naturally, during the planned meeting with (Trump) at the APEC summit in Shenzhen, we will continue to discuss the full range of issues related to the settlement," Ushakov said.
This will not be on the agenda for the trilateral summit, though, according to the senior U.S. official. The meeting is meant to be the "beginning of hopefully a conversation" on nuclear disarmament "that can be productive going forward," the official said.
No new agreements are expected to be announced at the meeting.
The U.S., Russia, and China boast the world's largest nuclear stockpiles, though Washington and Moscow's arsenals dwarf Beijing's.
The New START nuclear arms control treaty, an agreement between the U.S. and Russia first signed in 2010, expired in February 2026 — despite Moscow saying it offered to extend the deal another year.
The Trump administration allowed the agreement to lapse, with Trump saying "that he would like to keep limits on nuclear weapons and involve China in arms control talks," a U.S. official said at the time.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio also said Trump wanted to reach a new agreement that included China.
"Obviously, the president's been clear in the past that in order to have true arms control in the 21st century, it's impossible to do something that doesn't include China because of their vast and rapidly growing stockpile," Rubio said.
