China: Unprecedented summit between Trump, Xi and Putin who will talk about nuclear power and Iran, but not Ukraine

The meeting is finally confirmed, after weeks of discussion. The White House has formalized the holding of an unprecedented summit between Donald Trump, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin next Thursday in China. On the agenda of topics covered: the war in the Middle East… But not that in Ukraine.

The meeting will be held on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) meeting in Shenzhen, in the south of the country. It will mark a new stage in the return to the international scene of Vladimir Putin, isolated by the West since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, a little over a year after his meeting with Donald Trump in Alaska.

The Ukrainian file left aside

Experts nevertheless consider it unlikely that concrete results will emerge. “The president made it clear that he would address, among other things, the issue of reducing the number of nuclear weapons in the world. President Trump believes that this proliferation is very dangerous,” White House spokesperson Olivia Wales told reporters Friday evening.

Neither Beijing nor Moscow have yet confirmed the meeting, having simply mentioned discussions in this direction in recent weeks. “I think the president fully intends to address the issue of Iran during the trilateral meeting with Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin,” added an American official speaking on condition of anonymity during a call with the press. But “Washington is leading a completely different part” of negotiations with kyiv and Moscow, he added, specifying that China was “not really part of this part. It therefore does not seem appropriate to address the issue of Ukraine.”

Such a declaration seems likely to reassure kyiv and the West, showing a desire to leave the Ukrainian issue within the ambit of discussions with kyiv and Moscow which resumed this week and in which the Europeans were given the opportunity to participate. The latter, meeting at a summit in Dublin on Friday, decided to be represented by five countries (France, Germany, United Kingdom, Poland, Italy) and representatives of the EU.

No face-to-face between Trump and Putin

The idea of the trilateral summit was revealed in mid-October by the Wall Street Journal, which then stated that it had been proposed by Vladimir Putin, then in full rapprochement with Donald Trump, to his counterparts to discuss an end to the conflict in Ukraine. In other words: without kyiv or the Europeans.

Such a prospect aroused fears of a temptation for Washington, Beijing and Moscow to share the world during a new Yalta, the historic conference of February 1945 with the American Franklin D. Roosevelt, the British Winston Churchill and the Soviet Joseph Stalin.

It is also not planned that Donald Trump will meet Vladimir Putin one-on-one, unlike Xi Jinping with whom he will have lunch on Thursday. This will be their fourth interview since the Republican returned to the White House in January 2025, which should be dominated by the issue of artificial intelligence.