Trump, Putin and Xi to hold historic three-way meeting in China next week

Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are planning to meet in China late next week, the White House has said, in what would be the first three-way meeting between the leaders of the United States, Russia and China.

The talks will take place on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec) summit in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales told reporters. No agreement is expected to follow the talks, a senior US official said, according to the Associated Press and Reuters.

Mr Trump will arrive in Shenzhen late on Wednesday for the two-day summit of the 21-member Apec grouping. He will also hold bilateral talks with Mr Xi on Thursday, their fourth meeting since the US president returned to office in 2025. Before China, he will attend a summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) in the Philippines on Tuesday.

"President Trump will conclude his visit to China with a trilateral meeting between the president of the United States, the president of the People's Republic of China, and the president of the Russian Federation," Ms Wales said. She said the trip would "secure historic wins for the American people and advance America's interests in the Indo Pacific".

It is understood that Iran may also be discussed at the three-way meeting, but not Ukraine. Moscow and Beijing have yet to comment publicly on the planned talks. Chinese state media reported on Friday that Mr Xi would take part in "bilateral" talks on the sidelines of the Apec summit, citing a foreign ministry spokesman, but made no mention of a trilateral meeting.

Earlier this month, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian state media that there were "signals confirming readiness" for such talks at the summit.

Nuclear arms at the top of the agenda

The meeting comes at a fragile moment for nuclear arms control. The last major nuclear weapons treaty between the United States and Russia expired in February, leaving the world's two biggest nuclear arsenals without the guardrails that had limited them for years and effectively ending the arms-control co-operation that helped resolve the Cold War.

The United Nations has urged both sides to agree a new framework without delay. Mr Trump, however, has said he could replace the old deal with a better agreement that included China, which has been building up its own arsenal.

Mr Xi separately hosted both Mr Putin and Mr Trump in Beijing just days apart earlier this year, while the US president welcomed his Chinese counterpart to Washington in September. Mr Trump and Mr Xi have meanwhile sought to project warmer ties at summits in Beijing and Washington this year, though little significant progress appears to have been made on key issues such as trade, their race for dominance in artificial intelligence, and Taiwan.

A complicated backdrop of war and trade

Beijing has become a crucial trading partner for Moscow since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, a war that has isolated Russia and left it subject to Western sanctions. China has continued to buy Russian energy and supply goods that have helped the Russian economy keep functioning.

But a controversial US deal to import Russian diesel, and the suspension of sanctions targeting the biggest buyers of Moscow's oil and gas — including China — heightened European concern last month about the Trump administration's softening towards the Kremlin. Those moves sit uneasily alongside the war in Ukraine, which the White House says will not be on the agenda for the three-way meeting.

The war in Iran has also been a sticking point between Washington and Beijing, with China the largest buyer of Tehran's oil and its largest trading partner. The United States and Israel attacked Iran in February, and the fallout from that war continues to shape the region's politics and energy markets.

What to watch in Shenzhen

For all the symbolism of the gathering, officials on all sides have played down expectations. With no agreement expected and Ukraine off the table, the meeting is likely to be judged less by what it produces than by the fact that it is happening at all — the first time the three leaders have sat down together, in a year when the old rules governing their rivalries have been coming apart.