World

APEC Summit May Host Rare Trump‑Xi‑Putin Meeting, Analysts Weigh Implications

By Nils Adler

On the sidelines of this month’s Asia‑Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Shenzhen, China, a three‑way meeting between United States President Donald Trump, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin could take place. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said on Wednesday that China is in communication with relevant parties about the meeting, while Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday that work is underway and that the meeting should be finalised in the coming days. Trump has indicated he is open to talks focused on nuclear weapons, saying, “If President Xi wants to have it, I’d have it.” The leaders have met separately but have never held formal talks together.

Analysts say the meeting, scheduled for November 18‑19, would be a photo opportunity for Moscow. Alexander Bratersky, a Moscow‑based journalist and political analyst, told Al Jazeera that the meeting could be seen as a path toward a new Yalta, allowing Putin to appear as “first among equals” and to show that he is part of decisions shaping Europe’s security after the war in Ukraine. Bratersky added that the meeting would reflect China’s influence on Russia and that a successful meeting would give Putin a domestic propaganda win. He said it would be clear within a month whether anything substantive comes of it, and that a lack of results would make the event merely a photo op.

Trump’s motivation appears to be optics and leverage. Inderjeet Parmar, a professor of international politics at City St George’s, University of London, told Al Jazeera that a three‑way meeting would let Trump present himself as an indispensable deal‑maker, potentially on issues such as Ukraine, trade, energy or arms control. Parmar noted that the domestic political need for a foreign policy win is real after the midterm elections, and that any image of Trump with Xi and Putin could be spun as evidence that American power still commands the table.

China’s interest does not include a summit on Ukraine. German President Frank‑Walter Steinmeier said that when he met Xi on October 30, Xi indicated that the three presidents would probably meet in Shenzhen but not to discuss Ukraine. Xi explicitly said the Russia‑Ukraine war is a European conflict in which “Europeans must sit at the table.” Beijing is also likely to reject Trump’s push for nuclear talks; last month China’s Foreign Ministry said it would be “neither fair, reasonable nor realistic to ask China to join the so‑called trilateral nuclear disarmament negotiations at this stage.”

Parmar warned that a three‑way meeting could sideline allies. He said it would mark a clear break from the post‑1945 pattern in which Washington coordinated closely with European and Asian allies before engaging with Moscow or Beijing. A free‑standing trilateral meeting risks treating those allies as secondary players whose interests could be managed after the fact, potentially leading to a shift toward personalised great‑power diplomacy. He added that while the risk of a formal G3 secretariat is overstated, the normalisation of great‑power deals struck with little consultation of those most affected could leave excluded parties feeling the costs.