The White House has said that US President Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping are expected to hold a joint meeting late next week on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Shenzhen, southern China.
Trump is scheduled to arrive in Shenzhen late on Wednesday for the two-day gathering of the 21 APEC members. He is also set for bilateral talks with Xi on Thursday — their fourth meeting since Trump returned to office in 2025 — before the trilateral session at the end of the visit.
White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales said Trump has indicated he will raise the issue of reducing nuclear weapons, which he views as a serious global danger. Officials have indicated that Iran could also come up, but Ukraine is not expected to be on the agenda. A senior US official told news agencies that no concrete agreement is anticipated from the talks.
The planned meeting comes months after the main US-Russia nuclear arms control treaty expired in February, leaving the two largest nuclear arsenals without major constraints. Trump has previously suggested any new framework should also include China, which has been expanding its own nuclear forces. The United Nations has called on Washington and Moscow to quickly agree on a replacement arrangement.
Moscow and Beijing have not yet publicly confirmed the trilateral meeting. Earlier this month, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there were signals of readiness for such talks. Chinese state media reported only that Xi would hold bilateral meetings during the APEC summit.
The announcement follows separate meetings Xi held with both Trump and Putin in Beijing earlier this year, as well as Xi’s visit to Washington in September. Relations between Russia and China have deepened since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, while US-China ties have seen limited progress on trade, artificial intelligence competition and Taiwan despite recent summit diplomacy. Iran’s oil sales to China and the broader war involving Iran have also remained points of friction.
Trump’s Asia trip is also set to include an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in the Philippines earlier in the week. The White House has described the overall visit as aimed at advancing US interests in the Indo-Pacific.