Trump plans meeting with Putin and Xi Jinping in China

US President Donald Trump has said he may meet Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping in China. He said the meeting would discuss 'denuclearisation' and ending the war in Iran.

Trump told reporters he expects to meet the Russian and Chinese leaders at the Asia-Pacific summit in Shenzhen, China, scheduled for November 18-19.

On Sunday Trump said, 'Well, I am going to be going to China, and one of the meetings I think will be with President Putin and President Xi, and that will be interesting.' He added, 'We will talk a lot of things, including denuclearisation, but we will be talking about a lot of things. We are trying to end the war in Iran.'

If the meeting happens, it would be historic, although the three leaders are unlikely to discuss anything substantive, because their interests are at odds. On 21 October the Kremlin acknowledged that the trilateral meeting was 'being prepared'.

The announcement followed a Wall Street Journal report saying Putin wanted the three-way talks to broker a peace deal in Ukraine that would favour Moscow. Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

Sun Yun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center, said, 'I think it will happen. The question is the format and the content. China wants the image but not the costs.'

In the US, Trump is often criticised for his inclination towards authoritarian leaders such as those of China and Russia. Danny Russel, a former senior State Department official who served in former President Barack Obama's administration, said, 'Putin has the most to gain from a leaders' trilateral, and the Russians are clearly behind the push for a meeting, which would be a diplomatic coup.'

Russel said Trump, with his attraction to 'authoritarian strongmen', would love the meeting, though his advisers have warned him to steer clear of Ukraine as a topic of discussion.

Trump is expected to travel to Shenzhen to meet Xi for the third time this year, at a time when a fragile trade truce set to expire in January is in place. Beijing is hosting this year's leaders' summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, a 21-member grouping that includes the US and Russia.

His willingness to meet Putin also shows a desire to end Russia's isolation that followed its invasion.

Craig Singleton, senior director of the China program at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies, said the meeting may amount to no more than a photo opportunity that would allow Putin to be seen next to the US and Chinese leaders. He said, 'But these photo opportunities have diminishing diplomatic returns. The spectacle may be historic without producing anything particularly consequential.'