The key facts

  • China objects to discussing Ukraine at the trilateral meeting on November 19 in Shenzhen
  • Peskov confirmed an agreement on talks between Putin, Trump and Xi Jinping
  • According to Reuters, Trump is unlikely to raise the Ukrainian issue, while Moscow is interested in discussing it

An Agenda Without Ukraine

China has spoken out against including the Ukrainian conflict on the agenda of a possible meeting between Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Donald Trump, which is planned on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit on November 19 in Shenzhen. Reuters reported this citing a source familiar with the situation and a European diplomat. According to the agency's interlocutor, China is hardly involved in the talks between Washington and Moscow on ending the conflict in Ukraine, so discussing this topic in a trilateral format is impractical.

Different Goals of the Three Parties

An American official, according to the agency, noted that Trump will most likely not raise the Ukrainian issue, since trilateral talks are not suitable for discussing it. At the same time, Moscow, as Reuters points out, is interested in discussing the conflict in order to put forward its own terms. According to the agency's assessment, the three parties are pursuing completely different goals: Trump, whose political positions have weakened after the US midterm elections, hopes to move toward a trilateral agreement on nuclear arms control; for Xi Jinping, however, the meeting is a risky and hard-to-predict event. Chinese scholars interviewed by the agency assessed Trump's proposal for nuclear talks as unacceptable for Beijing: China's nuclear arsenal is significantly smaller than the Russian and American ones, and Beijing considers this area its weak point.

Confirmation of the Meeting

A possible meeting of the three leaders has been discussed in recent months. On November 14, Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov confirmed that an agreement had been reached on talks between Putin and the leaders of the US and China on November 19 in Shenzhen. The White House also confirmed Trump's plans to take part in the meeting. Earlier, Associated Press and Bloomberg, citing their own sources, reported that the US president does not intend to raise the Ukrainian issue at the trilateral meeting.