{"id":14172,"date":"2026-11-06T14:18:06","date_gmt":"2026-11-06T14:18:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=14172"},"modified":"2026-11-06T14:18:06","modified_gmt":"2026-11-06T14:18:06","slug":"what-a-trump-xi-putin-summit-could-mean-and-what-it-wouldnt-politics-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=14172","title":{"rendered":"What a Trump-Xi-Putin summit could mean \u2013 and what it wouldn\u2019t | Politics News"},"content":{"rendered":"
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On the sidelines of this month\u2019s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Shenzhen, China, an unprecedented three-way meeting between United States President Donald Trump, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin could take place.<\/p>\n

\u201cChina is in communication with relevant parties regarding a meeting between the three heads of state,\u201d Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told reporters in Beijing on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWork is under way to coordinate such a meeting,\u201d Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday, adding: \u201cWe hope that it will be finalised in the coming days.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump has said he is open to three-way talks focused on nuclear weapons. \u201cIf President Xi wants to have it, I\u2019d have it,\u201d he told reporters last month.<\/p>\n

The three leaders have met separately but have never held formal talks together.<\/p>\n

So could the meeting, pencilled in for November 18-19, actually happen, and what would it mean for the rest of the world? Here\u2019s what we know:<\/p>\n

What would Russia get out of a three-way meeting with the US and China?<\/h2>\n

At the very least, a photo opportunity.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a big event,\u201d Alexander Bratersky, a Moscow-based journalist and political analyst, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

He pointed to Pyotr Tolstoy, chairman of the Russian parliament\u2019s foreign affairs committee, who he said has described the meeting as a path towards a new Yalta \u2013 the 1945 conference where the leaders of the Soviet Union, the US and the United Kingdom shaped the post-war order in Europe.<\/p>\n

That allows Moscow to \u201ctalk big\u201d, Bratersky said, while putting Ukraine on the sidelines.<\/p>\n

Simply being at the table would make Putin \u201cfirst among equals\u201d, he added, giving him a photo opportunity to show the world that he will be among those deciding the future of Europe\u2019s security architecture after the war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

If the meeting produced results, he said, it would reflect China\u2019s influence on Russia.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe should take into account that we are dealing with a much weaker US leader after elections,\u201d Bratersky said.<\/p>\n

Trump remains in charge of foreign policy, he explained, but will have less leverage if Democrats, who won control of both chambers of Congress in this week\u2019s midterm elections, start sending money to Kyiv.<\/p>\n

\u201cA meeting by itself will be a success,\u201d he said. \u201cPutin will be able to sell it at home\u201d.<\/p>\n

Whether anything comes of it should become clear within a month or so, Bratersky said, and the meeting could lead to another during the Group of 20 (G20) summit in Miami in December.<\/p>\n

If nothing is produced before Christmas, he added, \u201cit will be just a photo op.\u201d<\/p>\n

What does Trump want?<\/h2>\n

Optics and leverage.<\/p>\n

Trump wants \u201ca personal, high-drama encounter\u201d that lets him claim he is \u201cdealing with\u201d the other two great powers on his own terms, Inderjeet Parmar, a professor of international politics at City St George\u2019s, University of London, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

A three-way meeting would allow Trump to present himself as \u201cthe indispensable deal-maker\u201d, Parmar said, talking up potential deals on Ukraine, trade, energy or arms control.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter the midterms the domestic political need for a foreign policy \u2018win\u2019 is real,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Any image of Trump sitting with Xi and Putin could be spun as evidence that American power still commands the table, he said, \u201ceven if the substance is limited or largely symbolic\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe domestic audience, and his eroding MAGA base, matters at least as much as the diplomatic one,\u201d Parmar said.<\/p>\n

What does China want?<\/h2>\n

Not a summit on Ukraine.<\/p>\n

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said he raised the idea of discussing Ukraine with Xi when they met in Beijing on October 30, and could see the \u201csurprise\u201d on his face, Germany\u2019s DPA news agency reported.<\/p>\n

Steinmeier told public broadcaster ARD that Xi said the three presidents would probably meet in Shenzhen, but not to discuss Ukraine.<\/p>\n

He said Xi explicitly pointed out that the Russia-Ukraine war is a European conflict in which the \u201cEuropeans must sit at the table\u201d.<\/p>\n

Beijing is also likely to swat away Trump\u2019s push for nuclear talks.<\/p>\n

Last month, China\u2019s Foreign Ministry said it would be \u201cneither fair, reasonable nor realistic to ask China to join the so-called trilateral nuclear disarmament negotiations at this stage\u201d.<\/p>\n

What would a meeting mean for the rest of the world?<\/h2>\n

Allies could be sidelined.<\/p>\n

Parmar said a three-way meeting would mark \u201ca clear break from the post-1945 pattern\u201d, in which Washington coordinated closely with its European and Asian allies before engaging with Moscow or Beijing.<\/p>\n

\u201cA free-standing trilateral [meeting] risks treating those allies as secondary players whose interests can be managed after the fact,\u201d he said, adding that those interests could even be traded.<\/p>\n

That would be a shift towards \u201cpersonalised great-power diplomacy\u201d, he said. But the Trump administration still has hopes to drive a wedge between Russia and China, Parmar added.<\/p>\n

Fears of a \u201cG3\u201d are \u201cunderstandable but overstated in institutional terms\u201d, he said, because the three capitals\u2019 interests diverge sharply on Ukraine, Taiwan, technology and the rules of the international economy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe real risk is not a formal G3 secretariat, but the normalisation of great-power deals struck with little consultation of those most affected,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHistory offers many examples of such moments. They rarely produce stable order and often leave the excluded feeling the costs,\u201d Parmar said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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On the sidelines of this month\u2019s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Shenzhen, China, an unprecedented three-way meeting between United States President Donald Trump, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin could take place. \u201cChina is in communication with relevant parties regarding a meeting between the three heads of state,\u201d Chinese Foreign Ministry…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14173,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_2277560469115098_106292521332774":"","twitter_aToxNzczMzI3Njk4OTg4ODUxMjAxOw==_1773327698988851200":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_templately_pack_id":"","_templately_imported_at":"","_templately_source":"","_templately_import_session_id":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-international-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t