Kremlin allows for a meeting of Putin, Trump, and Xi Jinping at the APEC summit in Shenzhen

The Kremlin has publicly spoken about a possible top-level meeting involving the leaders of Russia, the United States, and China. According to the outlet, Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov, in a conversation with journalist Pavel Zarubin for the Izvestia news service, confirmed that Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping had discussed such a scenario at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Bishkek.

Format of the possible meeting

As Ushakov reported, the parties were considering not only holding a full trilateral summit but also the option of separate bilateral contacts. “Xi Jinping, as the host, noted that, apparently, Trump will come, and obviously Putin will come as well, also as an invitee. And if everything works out as was said, then a meeting of the three could be organized, or at the very least a meeting with each of them is guaranteed,” Ushakov quoted his source as saying.

Venue and timing

A potential venue for such an event could be the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, scheduled for November 18–19 in Shenzhen, China. It is precisely this international event, by Moscow's logic, that could provide the format in which the three leaders would find themselves in one place and be able to hold both a joint and pairwise meetings.

Contradictory data

Here it is important to distinguish between what has already been confirmed and what remains in the realm of assumptions. On the one hand, the very fact that Putin and Xi Jinping discussed a trilateral format at the SCO summit in Bishkek has been confirmed by Ushakov himself and recorded by several outlets. On the other hand, the Kremlin explicitly states that there is no final agreement yet on a joint meeting of the three leaders: officially, the scenario is merely “allowed for.” Thus, formulations about an “upcoming meeting” run ahead of the official position, which is limited to acknowledging the possibility.

Context: deadlocked negotiations

The discussion of such a meeting is taking place against the backdrop of reports that US attempts to advance negotiations on ending the war in Ukraine have hit a dead end. In the same context, it is mentioned that in June Rodney Mims-Cook Jr. held closed-door talks in Saint Petersburg with representatives of the Kremlin, including Putin's aide Anton Kobyakov. These signals indicate that communication channels between Moscow and Washington, despite the public deadlock, continue to function.