Trump, Xi, Putin to hold historic meeting

WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping will hold the first three-way meeting between the leaders of the United States, Russia and China at a summit in Shenzhen next week, the White House said Friday.

Trump wants to talk about reducing nuclear arsenals at the trilateral talks on Thursday and is also set to bring up his war in Iran — but he is not expected to discuss Russia’s war in Ukraine, US officials said.

The three leaders will meet on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in the southern Chinese city, White House spokesperson Olivia Wales told reporters.

“The president has made it clear that, among other topics, he will discuss the reduction of nuclear weapons in the world. This proliferation, President Trump believes, is very dangerous,” Wales said.

One of the major conflicts dominating Trump’s second term as president will feature, but the other will not, the US officials said.

“I think the president does intend to talk about Iran in the trilateral meeting with Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin,” a senior US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told reporters on a call.

Washington has a “whole other track” of negotiations with Kyiv and Moscow aimed at ending the war in Ukraine, the official added, referring to talks that US envoys have had in recent days with Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“China is not really a part of that track, so it doesn’t seem appropriate to have the Ukraine discussion there,” the official added.

The meeting calls back to the 1945 Yalta summit in the Soviet Union, where then-US president Franklin D. Roosevelt, Britain’s Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin laid out the post-World War II settlement and new territorial boundaries in Europe.

Zelensky has raised the alarm that the meeting in Shenzhen could be a Yalta-like “redistribution of spheres of influence” for the 21st century.

The Trump administration has sought to reassert US dominance over the “Western hemisphere” — including by capturing Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January — but splitting the world among great powers like it’s 1945 may not guarantee security.