President Donald Trump said Sunday, Nov. 8, that he expects to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin together at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Shenzhen, China, on Nov. 18-19.
"One of the meetings I think will be with President Putin and President Xi, and that'll be interesting," Trump told reporters. "We'll talk a lot of things, including denuclearisation... We're trying to end the war in Iran," Euronews reported.
What Beijing and Moscow say
China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said Monday that China was "in communication with relevant parties," The Hindu reported. The Kremlin said last week that work was underway to arrange the meeting. "There is a common understanding among the participants in such a potential meeting that it would be appropriate and highly useful," spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Nov. 3, adding that work was underway to coordinate it, Politico Europe reported.
Why it matters
A three-way leaders' meeting would be rare. Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he does not want it to be "a 'Yalta – 2, 3, 4,' when there is a redistribution of influence," and that it should follow a meeting that includes Ukraine. Trump and Xi are also expected to hold their third one-on-one meeting of the year in Shenzhen, with a U.S.-China trade truce set to expire in January. Analysts quoted by Euronews cautioned the meeting may amount to little more than a photo opportunity.